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[0:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: One of the most enduring and iconic tales of the Christmas season comes from famed British writer Charles Dickens. His 1843 novel A Christmas Carol would become his most famous work, and the character of Scrooge is part of our lexicon now, being synonymous with someone who just doesn't enjoy the holidays. With so many stage and screen adaptations of this story, it surprised me to find out that its first appearance on Broadway wasn't until 1981. A musical by Michael Legrand and Sheldon Harnick. Famed British actor and Star Trek captain Patrick Stewart would bring a one-man version of Dickens' classic to Broadway four different times at four different theaters, with the last time being in 2001 at the Marquis Theater.

[1:07] Patrick Oliver Jones: Old Marley was dead as a doornail. Now, so far, closing night episodes have focused on various musicals that have played at the Marquis. But for this bonus holiday episode, we'll explore the inspiration and evolution of a play adaptation, from the development of the script to the various Broadway productions and why the one at the Marquis in 2001 was so special. It's a testament not only to the enduring magic of storytelling, but also to the unwavering dedication of a masterful actor to recapture the Christmas spirit.

[1:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: Welcome back to Closing Night. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, your dedicated host, bringing you bite-sized bonus stories of other shows from the Marquis Theater that we didn't get to in season one. These many episodes offer a quick dive into the fascinating world of famous and forgotten shows that close too soon and their unique journeys to closing night.

[2:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Married with a fifth child on the way and burdened by his father's financial troubles, Dickens was driven by the urgent need for a successful book that could alleviate his financial woes. But what to write about? In 1843, Dickens was horrified by reading a government report. It was in fact the second parliamentary report, the Parliamentary Commission on the Employment of Women and Children, showing the horrific conditions under which very young children were made to work underground or to work tremendously long hours in appalling conditions in factories.

[3:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: That's Michael Slater, a renowned Dickens historian and professor, who notes that Dickens had been deeply moved by that parliamentary report and felt a profound connection with the plight of the poor, especially since he himself had worked in a factory as a child. In a whirlwind of creativity, Dickens began writing in October of 1843, driven not only by financial desperation, but also by a genuine desire to address those societal issues and advocate for generosity. His 30,000-word story was completed in only six weeks, and on December 19th, 1843, A Christmas Carol was published.

[4:21] Patrick Oliver Jones: It introduced the iconic character of Ebenezer Scrooge as well as his ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. And its debut run of 6,000 copies sold out within a week of its release. Thackeray, Dickens's great rival as a novelist, said in his review of The Christmas Carol, it seems to me a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness. But due to high printing costs, Dickens didn't make as much from that book as he had hoped. Also, copyright laws were basically non-existent, so countless reprints and stage adaptations of A Christmas Carol were produced, and Dickens saw no money from them.

[5:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: So, in an effort to capitalize on the success and popularity of the novella, he adapted the story himself and began performing it in public readings. This one-man show, which began in 1853 with money going to charity, eventually grew into a tour of paid readings. Between 1853 and 1870, he offered 127 performances of A Christmas Carol. During one stretch of three months while touring in America, he made 19,000 pounds, which equates to more than $4 million in today's money, more than he had ever made in his lifetime.

[5:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: These readings showcased Dickens' storytelling prowess and also contributed to the enduring legacy of A Christmas Carol as a cherished and transformative holiday tale that has never been out of print. After having read through all the newspapers and magazines in the hotel, Stewart discovered a slim volume of A Christmas Carol on a bookshelf, realizing that he had never really read it. He expected it to be a syrupy Victorian fairy tale, but instead he got a powerful narrative of cruelty and redemption.

[6:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: Stewart was so profoundly moved by it that he created an adaptation of the story for solo performance. The original three-hour rendition was exclusively presented at a parish church in his hometown of Murfield, West Yorkshire, as a charitable effort to support the restoration of their church organ. A year later, Stewart was cast in the role that would change the course of his career, Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the syndicated TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation.

[7:28] Patrick Oliver Jones: The success and popularity of the show kept him busy. So it wasn't until the second season that Stewart revisited and redeveloped A Christmas Carol into a more compact yet still full-length solo show, as he explained on Regis and Kathy Lee. It evolved at a time when I realized that Star Trek was going to last for a year or two, and I knew that I had to find some way of keeping in touch with the live theater. Keep those juices...

[7:57] Patrick Oliver Jones: ...juices fine. Yeah. And I suppose ultimately act as an ego too. You know, that the one-man show is the final ego trip. And um, it began as a simple reading and it grew. Now, of course, there have been numerous versions of Dickens' tale on stage and screen. But what set Stewart's adaptation apart was its authenticity, very much in keeping with those original presentations done by Dickens.

[8:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: In fact, Stewart was able to access the various reading versions of Dickens' work still available, and could see how the writers' performances of A Christmas Carol changed over the years. Thus, Stewart was able to capture the essence of the author himself and incorporate the author's voice into the presentation of the story as a whole. To help him with this adaptation and reassure him of its accuracy, Stewart approached Professor Albert Hutter, a Dickens scholar at the University of California in Los Angeles.

[8:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: And so the inaugural presentation took place at Hutter's home, attended by approximately 18 people, with Stewart being grateful for its positive response.

[9:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yet, with all of his television commitments, it would take a few years before Stewart could actually bring a more realized version to the stage.

[9:19] Patrick Oliver Jones: And so, in the lead up to its Broadway debut in 1991, A Christmas Carol underwent a pre-Broadway tour, stopping in Santa Barbara, Salt Lake City, Anchorage, and Pasadena on four consecutive weekends.

[9:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now it's not a reading, it's a fully performed show in which I'm narrator, and um we've never been too clear, but somewhere in excess of about 40 different characters, all of whom are fully created.

[9:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: Now I have no costume, no props. I have five rather sad bits of painted furniture, but a brilliant lighting plot which helps to create location and mood. And the rest of it really is up to me.

[10:06] Patrick Oliver Jones: I try to make the characters as vivid and yet as real as possible.

[10:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: It also marked Stewart's return to Broadway after 21 years, and he compared the overall experience of performing and staging A Christmas Carol to being on a roller coaster and a merry-go-round at the same time because of its pace.

[10:40] Patrick Oliver Jones: Of the voices, Scrooge was the most difficult because the whole story um uh stands a fold by Scrooge, and at the beginning, I was playing him, I think, a little two-dimensionally.

[10:52] Patrick Oliver Jones: He was somewhat of a caricature until a good friend of mine, Roger Reese, who had been uh who had been helping with the show pointed out that Scrooge was me.

[11:00] Patrick Oliver Jones: But Scrooge existed all of us, in other words, and so uh he had to become the most natural, the most centered person in the show.

[11:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, those 14 rollercoaster performances in 1991 helped Stewart walk away with the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One Person Show.

[11:20] Patrick Oliver Jones: He would return to Broadway the following Christmas season at the Broadhurst Theatre for 22 performances, and a London production in 1993 at the Old Vic Theatre, where he won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.

[11:20] Patrick Oliver Jones: Star Trek: The Next Generation had its series finale in May 1994, and later that year, Stewart was back on Broadway again for 18 performances of A Christmas Carol at the Richard Rogers Theater.

[11:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: A couple of years later, he would perform the show again in Los Angeles, and the LA Times was there.

[11:57] Patrick Oliver Jones: The genius of a performance that does not need makeup, a costume change, a backdrop, or anything in the way of props other than that all-important book and a few modest sticks of plain wooden furniture.

[12:09] Patrick Oliver Jones: What Stewart does bring to the stage is his own virtuosity.

[12:14] Patrick Oliver Jones: By taking away the Rasmataz usually associated with theatrical magic, he's able to fill the stage all the more richly with his own penetrating and versatile voice.

[12:25] Patrick Oliver Jones: His mastery of gesture and facial expressions that instantly summon fear, delight, longing, and awe.

[12:35] Patrick Oliver Jones: Due to the various Star Trek films throughout the 1990s and the beginning of the X-Men franchise in 2000, A Christmas Carol was put on the shelf for a while.

[12:45] Patrick Oliver Jones: But that didn't mean Stewart left theater behind.

[12:48] Patrick Oliver Jones: During this period, he played Prospero in The Tempest on Broadway in 1995.

[12:54] Patrick Oliver Jones: Two years after that, he took on the role of Othello with the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C.

[13:01] Patrick Oliver Jones: This was called a photo-negative production, with Stewart as a white Othello and the rest of the cast being all black.

[13:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Stewart came back to Broadway in 2000 for a limited run revival of Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mount Morgan, which had its own controversy as Stewart publicly chastised the producers in a Saturday evening curtain speech, which made subsequent news headlines.

[13:28] Patrick Oliver Jones: The Schubert Organization board chairman, Jerry Schoenfeld, in turn filed a complaint with the Actors Equity Association.

[13:36] Patrick Oliver Jones: Well, a year and a half later, on September 11th, 2001, Stewart was back in England preparing for a production of J.B. Priestley's play Johnson over Jordan.

[13:48] Patrick Oliver Jones: However, Stewart told Playbill, quote, it was a very important production, but I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be in New York City, as did my wife, who was from New Jersey.

[13:59] Patrick Oliver Jones: As the events and aftermath of September 11th continued to unfold, there was a collective sense of helplessness that I've touched on in a previous episode.

[14:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: It was also during this time that a friend of Stewart's casually expressed a desire for him to revive A Christmas Carol that year.

[14:17] Patrick Oliver Jones: After mulling over the idea for about three weeks, Stewart recognized this as an opportunity to contribute.

[14:25] Patrick Oliver Jones: But with commitments already lined up to work on Star Trek video games and the next major motion picture, he reached out to Paramount, which gave him approval to finally come to New York so that he could bring A Christmas Carol back to Broadway.

[14:41] Patrick Oliver Jones: This time with proceeds going to charity, as well as one performance specifically earmarked for the Actors Fund September 11th campaign.

[14:50] Patrick Oliver Jones: This production was not only for a good cause, but it gave Stewart a chance to revisit some of his favorite characters.

[14:58] Patrick Oliver Jones: I love. Oh, I love being old Joe, who is the nasty vile rag and bone man. Come in about all that. I mean, sit down, you could look up to a better place. He's he's a great fondness for old Joe.

[15:11] Patrick Oliver Jones: And uh there's a char woman uh called Mrs. Stillbow! Also not very attractive. But you know, there isn't a character in this that actually I don't have an affection for, and luckily I see them very vividly.

[15:24] Patrick Oliver Jones: They're three-dimensional for me, so I just have to slip inside them for the few moments that they're on stage.

[15:31] Patrick Oliver Jones: Of his four Broadway productions of A Christmas Carol, this one at the Marquis was the shortest.

[15:38] Patrick Oliver Jones: It opened on December 24th with no previews and only lasted eight performances, closing a week later on December 30th, 2001.

[15:49] Patrick Oliver Jones: Yet, even still, its weekly gross was double that of his other three sold-out productions.

[15:55] Patrick Oliver Jones: So there were plenty of funds going to support the Coalition for the Homeless and Food for Survival, as well as the victims of 9-11.

[16:04] Patrick Oliver Jones: What's ironic is that Stewart considers himself a bit of a Scrooge.

[16:10] Patrick Oliver Jones: Some of that comes from his own difficult upbringing and lack of joy around the holiday season, but also because of the stress and anxiety it gives him.

[16:20] Patrick Oliver Jones: Nonetheless, he certainly did plenty of giving to the grateful audiences who came to see his one-man rendition of this Christmas classic.

[16:37] Patrick Oliver Jones: I hope I've never been quite as mean or quite as unloving or quite as antisocial as Scrooge's, but there have been times when I have been all of those things.

[16:47] Patrick Oliver Jones: It's also, I suppose, some people might say great ego trip, too, because it's all about me as an actor, though there are many, many occasions when I would give anything to have another actor walk on stage and just for a few minutes take some of the responsibility of telling that story.

[17:05] Patrick Oliver Jones: It hasn't happened yet. I thought of putting an invitation out, actually. And if anyone wants to come along one night and be Mrs. Fezziwig or Tiny Tim, I'd welcome their arrival.

[17:32] Patrick Oliver Jones: Closing Night is a production of WINMI Media. I'm Patrick Oliver Jones, host and executive producer.

[17:39] Patrick Oliver Jones: Dan Delgado is editor and producer, not only for this podcast, but also his own movie podcast called The Industry.

[17:48] Patrick Oliver Jones: Theme music for Closing Night composed and created by Blake Stadnik, and co-producer is Maria Clara Ribeiro.

[17:56] Patrick Oliver Jones: Be sure to stay tuned for more bonus episodes like this as other marquee shows make their way to Closing Night.