Stay tuned for more features to come!
A Christmas Carol: From Generation to Generation
By Steve Scott, Taken from Robert Falls at Goodman Theatre: The First Twenty Years
Since its first production in 1978, A Christmas Carol has played to close to one million audience members, becoming the most beloved production in a now-crowded Chicago holiday performance lineup.
Its success, however, wasn't assured. Prior to the Goodman's production, only one other regional theater, the Guthrie in Minneapolis, had mounted the show. The size and scope of the Goodman's original production made A Christmas Carol one of the riskiest, most ambitious undertakings in the theater's history. Using the Guthrie's adaptation (by dramaturg Barbara Field), director Tony Mockus and set designer Joe Nieminski created a colorful, ingeniously mechanized physical production. Mockus cast more than twenty of Chicago's best actors plus a bevy of child performers. As the irascible, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Mockus chose William J. Norris, known primarily for his work as a member of Chicago's famed Organic Theatre. The response to the production from both critics and audiences was rapturous, prompting artistic director Gregory Mosher and general manager Roche Schulfer to schedule an encore production a year later. Audiences grew, as did the demand for subsequent revivals. Within a few years, A Christmas Carol had taken its place alongside the Marshall Field's windows and The Nutcracker as a bona fide Chicago holiday tradition.
Since 1978, seven different directors have brought their own visions to the production and five actors have succeeded Norris as Scrooge (Frank Galati, Tom Mula, Rick Snyder, William Brown and Jonathan Weir). After experimenting with a number of different adaptations of the story, the theater commissioned a version from Goodman dramaturg Tom Creamer that has been used since 1989. After playing its final performance in the old Goodman Theatre on December 30, 2000, A Christmas Carol moved to the new Goodman the following fall in an elaborately redesigned physical production by Todd Rosenthal. The popularity of the show has never faltered and A Christmas Carol is now being seen by the children and grandchildren of those original audiences from the 1970s.
What accounts for this success? There is the tale itself, a compelling blend of ghost story, romance, holiday cheer and redemption that grows increasingly relevant in a society prone to value economics instead of humanity. In addition, the production is scrupulously maintained and improved to avoid the staleness that sometimes infects long-running shows. The show's theme of inclusively is another drawing card. Since the program's inception, the Goodman has made special efforts to cast a broad range of actors in the play, reflecting the breadth of Chicago's diverse community and underscoring the message of openhearted generosity that lies at the heart of Dickens' story.
A Christmas Carol has become the first theater-going experience for thousands of children and is an annual family ritual. At any Christmas Carol performance one can hear a parent telling her children about the first time she encountered Marley's ghost as a child in the Goodman audience, or family groups gleefully comparing last year's edition of the show to its predecessors. The music, the dance, the awe-inspiring effects accompanying the arrivals of ghosts, the antics of Scrooge as he rediscovers the joy of Christmas Day-all are compelling magnets for young audiences, giving them the kind of thrilling experience that can only happen in a live theater performance. Perhaps more than any other single production, the Goodman's A Christmas Carol embodies the three cornerstones that Robert Falls and his collaborators aspired to achieve for twenty years and that will guide the Goodman into the future: a striving for artistic quality onstage and off, a commitment to diversity and a dedication to bringing the work of the theater to the entire Chicago community.