An Atlanta Christmas has its delightful traditions: the great tree atop Macy’s at Lenox Square, a different Santa Claus in every mall, multiple Nutcrackers dancing with sugar plum fairies, a variety of choirs in concert and the lights at Atlanta Botanical Garden.
But the most enduring holiday tradition in Atlanta theater lets a very, very greedy old man named Ebenezer Scrooge grumble and scoff his way across multiple stages around town.
This season, at least four variations on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” have opened at professional theaters, and ArtsATL asked the quartet of actors who portray Scrooge to gather over Zoom to discuss the role.
Andrew Benator made his debut as Scrooge in Alliance Theatre’s stunning new production of its annual show, onstage through Dec. 24, though he had played Jacob Marley and other parts in five previous stagings.
Candace Lambert, a member of the new repertory acting ensemble at Stage Door Theatre, having retired from teaching drama at DeKalb School of the Arts, plays Scrooge through Dec. 19 at the Dunwoody theater.
Drew Reeves returns to the role he has played at Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse since 2005 after the pandemic stopped last year’s show. It runs until Dec. 23.
Maged Roushdi, a longtime improviser at Dad’s Garage Theatre, plays this year’s Ebenezer in the troupe’s annual improv show Invasion: Christmas Carol through Dec. 29.
“It is a ride. It is a roller coaster.”
Benator follows in the footsteps of other well-known Atlanta actors to play Scrooge at the Alliance, including David de Vries, Chris Kayser and Tom Key. Productions of A Christmas Carol have been a staple there for three decades.
Andrew Benator: The role that “Christmas Carol” plays for a lot of theaters, there’s a responsibility to Scrooge that does not go along with most roles that you play. For a theater to ask you to do it shows a lot of faith in you that you’re going to be able to pull it off and fulfill a pretty important function. That’s flattering.
It’s also a hugely challenging and rewarding role to play. It has a massive arc, like a true dramatic, almost melodramatic, arc that you play every night, and not every character does. It is a ride. It is a roller coaster. And once you get on, you don’t get off until the very end. It’s heavy. It’s exhausting, I’m finding. I’m in my first year, as is Maged and Candace. It’s exhausting, but it’s great and rewarding.
Drew Reeves: Our version’s runtime is only about an hour and 45 minutes, but, for me, it feels like five hours. The most challenging thing for doing it as many years as I have is how much of that stage time is spent doing active watching and listening.
(Everyone nods.)
Reeves: I have no lines for 15 minutes watching the Cratchit scene, but I have to be engaged every night internally. Not just looking like I’m engaged, I have to be engaged. It’s necessary to my arc. And that is really exhausting, more so than doing sword fights or dance numbers.
Comic improv collides with “Carol”
“Invasion: Christmas Carol” has run for more than a decade at Dad’s Garage, using the script for “A Christmas Carol” up to a point in the first act. Then, the show deviates from the regular story by introducing an “invader” into the piece. So, alongside three Christmas ghosts, Scrooge must deal with the likes of Young Frankenstein or Sigmund Freud, among others. Roushdi said that, no matter the invader, the structure of “A Christmas Carol” usually stays intact, complete with the old man’s redemption.
Maged Roushdi: That’s what we try to hold true. The redemption still has to be there because that’s the heart of the show for us, so finding a way to incorporate an improvisor who doesn’t know any lines of the show is what makes it kind of cool.
Benator: Is it a different improvisor every night who is the invader?
Roushdi: Yeah, different improvisor, different character. Sometimes they know the show, sometimes they don’t.
Benator: Wow.
Roushdi: So it’s like wrangling everything.
Candace Lambert: Do you, the actors, know beforehand who the invader will be, or is it a surprise to you onstage?
Roushdi: Not only do we not know who the invader is going to be, we are sequestered backstage. There are great lengths taken to make sure that the first time we see the invader is when they walk out onstage. They come out and do the curtain speech, so the audience sees them. The audience gets introduced to the invader before the actors are.
“Who can pass up playing Scrooge?”
Lambert auditioned at Stage Door for a full season of shows. In their first production, she played Friar Laurence in “Romeo and Juliet,” and she really wanted to play the Ghost of Christmas Present in “A Christmas Carol.” But the theater had other plans.
Lambert: Who can pass up playing Scrooge? I thought it was great.
ArtsATL: Was it odd that someone saw Scrooge in you?
Lambert: It’s acting, but I think that there’s a Scrooge in every one of us. I think that it’s easy for Scrooge to come out, quite easy, and, sorry to say, it was easy to slip right into that. This is a terrible anecdote, but I taught for years at Dekalb School of the Arts, and I told my students that I was a witch, which you know I kind of am, and that I was a good witch most of the time, but that my bad witch came out. And that they needed to beware when my bad witch came out. I think of Scrooge as my bad witch coming out.
Benator: How old were these students?
Lambert: They were high school students.
ArtsATL: Do you like your bad witch?
Lambert: Oh, yes. Bad witches serve great purposes.
“Truth that crosses all boundaries”
Reeves said that he used to be more cynical about performing in A Christmas Carol because he felt the theater was just putting out a holiday product, but he’s had a change of heart in the years he has performed the role. It is now very dear to him.
Reeves: About year seven, I went through some very personal crises of my own, mental health issues, I had a major breakdown in my life that I was recovering from. That year, I went into “Christmas Carol” and went, “Oh, my God.” It’s kind of like Candace is talking about, the bad witch in all of us. This story is the story of someone hitting rock bottom from mental illness, from addiction, from grief. The only way to recovery is to face your past, learn how to live in the present and understand that the future is the same for us all. What matters is how we’ve lived. That’s hit home for me.
Lambert: Yes!
Reeves: That universality of it is why it can be played so many ways. It can be a simple staging, it can be an elaborate staging, it can be any gender or race playing the role. Because, at its heart, it is a human truth that crosses all boundaries that we can put up in our society. Every human being knows that experience of having a horrible, horrible night where you hit rock bottom.
“Wonderful side effects” of Scrooge
The actors said that playing Scrooge hasn’t really affected their mood or demeanor during this holiday season.
Benator: The rehearsal process has completely taken over my life. To some extent, this always happens when I’m doing a play, where everything is pointing toward first preview. And this new role, a big role, is all-consuming for weeks. But I’m still me when I go to Target.
Lambert: You can separate what you’re doing onstage from what you do in real life. You’ve got to, or you’ll go crazy. I leave it behind. But Scrooge comes out, you know. I can see myself channeling Scrooge when I’m angry or annoyed at somebody.
Roushdi: I don’t think it comes out of me any more than normal, but now, whenever I’m being an asshole, people just think I’m doing the Scrooge thing. And, yeah sure, that’s what I’m doing.
Reeves: I don’t know what it’s like to be a greedy rich guy, but the isolation of his life is what I think they connected with me when they put me in the role when I started: a single guy, an eccentric bachelor, an older guy not getting married, socially awkward. I think that’s the aspect of Scrooge they saw in me. The first few years, just being not unconscious of that, I did allow the grumpiness to come out a bit much, but I was a different person. This role has been a part of changing who I am as a human being. That’s one of the wonderful side effects of doing this.
Lambert: It’s what Dickens would’ve liked.
