Contents new Stages Features

November – December 2015

• 
  Goodman Theatre’s A Christmas Carol Through the Ages
  
• 
  Double the Humbug! A Conversation with A Christmas Carol‘s Two Scrooges Larry Yando and Allen Gilmore
  
• 
  A Costume Designer’s Perspective
  
• 
  Musical Director Malcolm Ruhl on Putting the ‘Carol’ in A Christmas Carol
  
• 
  Share the Joy Day: The Goodman Gives Back
  
• 
  Charles Dickens: A Biography
  

• 
  A Christmas Carol
  
• 
  Cast Profiles
  

• 
  A Brief History of Goodman Theatre
  
• 
  Ticket Information, Parking, Restaurants and More
  
• 
  Staff
  

• 
  Civic Committee
  
• 
  Leadership
  
• 
  Support
  

• 
  Bob Cratchit’s Guide to Theater Etiquette
  
• 
  Mr. Fezziwig’s Guide to 19^th Century England
  
• 
  The Ghost of Christmas Past’s Guide to the History of Christmas
  
• 
  Bob Cratchit’s Guide to Theater Etiquette
  
• 
  Game: Spot the Differences with the Ghost of Christmas Present
  
• 
  Mr. Fezziwig’s Guide to 19^th Century England
  
• 
  The Ghost of Christmas Past’s Guide to the History of Christmas
  

• 
  What’s Next
  

Publisher: David Snyder

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For eight seasons Jeff Award-winning actor Larry Yando (The Goodman’s The Little Foxes and The Jungle Book) has simultaneously frightened and delighted theatergoers with his performance as greedy businessman Ebenezer Scrooge. Jeff-nominated actor Allen Gilmore also appears on the Albert stage as the miserly Scrooge, performing the role at select performances. Shortly before performances began, Yando and Gilmore spoke with OnStage Editor Michael Mellini about the joys of playing such a curmudgeon and why performing in the Goodman’s annual production is truly a unique experience.

A Christmas Carol’s Musical Director Malcolm Ruhl returns for his 11th production this season, where he can be seen on stage throughout the show playing various instruments alongside three other musicians. Below, Ruhl explains the role of a musical director and reveals why he loves performing in A Christmas Carol every year.

The duties of a musical director vary from production to production and can include everything from participation in the casting of actors, contracting musicians, teaching music to the singers, accompanying rehearsals, conducting and leading rehearsals for the musicians, to re-orchestrating the score. For A Christmas Carol, which is a play with music (as opposed to a musical play), I oversee the live musical aspects of the production. The music we play and sing often changes from year to year as a result of changes in the director’s vision of the play or to take advantage of the specific talents of the current production’s performers. We try to make sure that there’s always something new and special for audience members who return every year.

I play three different instruments in A Christmas Carol: accordion, concertina (a sort of a smaller version of an accordion that has buttons instead of a keyboard) and nylon-string classical guitar. Of the three, the guitar is the most period-correct for the settings of A Christmas Carol. Over the years we have conducted a fair amount of research on music from Dickens’ era. Though the musical instruments we play may not always be exactly period-correct, the music itself is always fitting of the times, authentically evoking the culture of each of the different classes of English society that turn up in the play.

For me, returning to this show each year feels like attending a family reunion. There’s always a mix of new and returning cast members. It’s like going to a holiday gathering where family members bring a new friend or significant other. I’ve gotten to work with a lot of amazing Chicago actors during the last 11 years of A Christmas Carol, several of whom have since gone on to perform on Broadway. The cast lists from the play’s 38-year history read like a “who’s who” of the Chicago theater community. This year is like an extra special holiday reunion for me because my daughter Maddi is in the cast. She is a brilliant musician and has exactly the right skills and temperament for her role. She has also seen the show every year that I have been in it! We have performed together before, but this will be the first time we have worked together on stage in a professional theater production. She recently moved to Portland, Oregon, but thanks to A Christmas Carol, she is back in Chicago for 10 weeks. I literally get to celebrate the holidays with family on stage!

Year after year I’m always energized by the timeless and universal messages of the play. This is a story that asks questions about what it means to be human, as an individual and as a member of humanity as a whole. It also addresses human suffering and how we choose to deal with it in its various forms. We all have obstacles we strive to overcome, and in our efforts to do so we hopefully work toward some measure of success. That success might be adequately providing for one’s family, the accumulation of ever-greater amounts of wealth, or in less quantifiable ways, transforming ourselves into the people we want to be. It might even be survival in the most literal sense. Although most of us are not as personally isolated or financially wealthy as Scrooge is at the beginning of the play, we are all vulnerable to falling into his self-serving, self-centered way of looking at the world—especially now that we live extremely busy modern lives, where everybody’s going in a million different directions at once. We often don’t make time to recognize and nurture the important human connections that we all need. A Christmas Carol reminds me of the perils of forgetting that and the rewards of remembering it. Given that there is always something new going on in the world that seems uncannily relevant to the text in a social or political sense, or perhaps because of new personal struggles we may be facing as individuals, walking through this journey together as a company every year only adds to the depth of our on- and off-stage relationships. Once again, I’m thrilled to share the Christmas Carol experience with this company and our wonderful Chicago audiences.

Since 2009, the Goodman has been spreading holiday cheer to service men and women and their families during our annual production of A Christmas Carol with the special Community Day and Share the Joy Day events. It started simply enough. The final performance of A Christmas Carol in 2009 landed on New Year’s Eve, and, given the holiday, seats to the performance were readily available. Folks at the Goodman recognized this as an opportunity to share the fabulous production with a local, charitable partner and launched Community Day. Willa Taylor, Walter Director of Education and Community Engagement and a navy veteran, made no hesitation in her suggestion of the Illinois USO. That year, the Goodman provided 500 tickets to servicemen and women (and their families) who were about to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq; it was our small way to thank them for their service. The performance was flanked by lobby celebrations, including pre- and post show performances by the rock band Fair Herald, cameos by Illinois representatives Mike Quigley and family photos with Scrooge and Santa.

In 2010, the Goodman expanded its celebration and gave away every ticket to the final performance of A Christmas Carol. The primary beneficiary remained the Illinois USO, with additional families served by the Ronald McDonald House Charities and Snow City Arts Foundation, women and children from the Maria Shelter and men and women from the Lincoln Park Community Shelter. The lobby celebrations included a performance by ChiArts High School’s jazz band, costumed characters, cameos by Governor Pat Quinn and Albert Goodman and another New Year’s Eve launch.

With Community Day solidified as a Goodman Theatre tradition, each successive year has brought more opportunities to celebrate the Illinois USO, while partnering with new local charities, Goodman program participants, local musicians and performers. In 2013, the celebration formerly known as Community Day became Share the Joy Day, and moved from the end of the play’s run to the very first performance, making it the launch of A Christmas Carol season at the Goodman. Over the years, charitable beneficiaries have included Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, The Odyssey Project, the 100 Club of Chicago, Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers, the Warrenville Juvenile Detention Center, the Dovetail Project, 360 Youth Services, the Veterans Ticket Foundation, The Fraternal Order of Police and Children’s Memorial Hospital, as well as Goodman program participants from the Goodman Youth Arts Council, Student Subscription Series and GeNarrations. This year, the event also benefitted organizations committed to eradicating violence from the streets of Chicago. Lobby performances and special appearances have included Terri Hemmert of WXRT, the Schurz High School choir, Chicago Math and Science Academy band and cast members from TV’s Chicago Fire. The seventh annual Share the Joy Day was celebrated this year on November 14, 2015, once again with the Illinois USO!

Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812, the second of eight children. His father, John Dickens, worked as a naval pay clerk, but his poor financial habits landed him in debtor’s prison when the younger Dickens was 12. While the rest of his family was imprisoned with his father, Charles was forced to work in a blacking factory for several months, pasting labels on shoe polish bottles. Throughout the ordeal, Dickens worked six days a week in sordid conditions while missing his family and longing to return to school. When his father finally declared bankruptcy, the family was reunited and Dickens resumed his education. Then, at 15, Dickens took a job in an attorney’s office; a few years later he began to work as a freelance reporter. In 1833 his first stories, Sketches By Boz, were published in a magazine. He then began to write novels in serial form: chapters were published one at a time, leaving readers clamoring to buy the following edition so they could find out what happened next. Dickens would eventually become known for such works as Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities and Nicholas Nickleby; to this day, his books have never gone out of print in England.

Many of Dickens’ works are concerned with the socioeconomic problems of the increasingly industrial society in which he lived: child labor, low pay for factory workers and increasing social stratification. His own dismal experience as a child factory worker both haunted and inspired him for the remainder of his life, and his work often critiqued the lack of education and opportunity for poor children in Victorian England. Dickens penned A Christmas Carol in 1844. It became instantaneously popular and has inspired enduring admiration over the 171 years since its publication. Later in his life, Dickens toured Great Britain and America giving public readings of his works. Together with his literary celebrity, the dramatic readings catapulted him to the 19th century equivalent of rock star status. He continued to write until his death in 1870.

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