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The Playhouse: Banish Your Inner Scrooge

The Playhouse production of Dickens' A Christmas Carolhas an interesting twist:  it was re-written and adapted by San Antonians Tony Ciaravino and  Tim Hedgepeth. I interviewed him about the production and his role in breathing new life into it.

"The challenge was for both of us to go back to the original and try to honor Dickens as closely as we could. It's a much darker novel than I think a lot of people remember," Hedgepath said.

A Christmas Carol is the Victorian morality play wherein Scrooge is helped to find his humanity. To do so he must re-visit Christmases in the past, the present and the future to help him see who he's become.

"It's an everyman story--Scrooge is you, Scrooge is me, he's all of us. And we take this physical and psychological journey with him. And in so doing are rewarded with a beautiful, beautiful ending. But you've got to work to get there."

Hedgepeth says getting one person in particular to play Scrooge--Andy Thornton--was a must-have for this production.

"We really weren't interested in pursuing this frankly, if  Andy didn't want to join us. So we had the added luxury of writing a play for an actor we both know."

This adaptation isn't one of the music-based, song-n-dance ones.

"It's not a musical, I can tell you that. The only music we use is traditional Victorian Christmas music.  But I think pretty much what we have on that stage is what we hoped to achieve and we're both very proud of it."

A Christmas Carol is running Thursday through Saturday nights through the 19th, 3PM on Sunday and then closing out Monday the 21st.

For more on A Christmas Carolgo here

Jack Morgan can be reached at jack@tpr.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii