This weekend, as in many years past, A Christmas Carol opens on the main stage of the Spokane Civic Theatre. This production makes use of the popular adaptation by Barbara Field, which has been the theater's preferred version of Charles Dickens' classic holiday tale for more than 40 years.
"Civic has done all the musical versions, the play, everything, but the Barbara Field is what we keep coming back to," says the theater's executive director, Jake Schaefer. "And it's truly because there is more heart in her adaptation than most of the others combined."
The community theater apparently even had a hand in the script's early evolution. As local theater lore has it, when the histrionic Civic co-founder Dorothy Darby Smith was directing the first Spokane production back in the late 1970s, she actively corresponded with Field.
"Barbara would send Dorothy pages, and then Dorothy would rip 'em up and send 'em back," Schaefer says with a laugh.
Longtime Civic playwright-in-residence Bryan Harnetiaux then became the recurring narrator for many stagings of A Christmas Carol that followed. More recently, the theater's music director, Henry McNulty, wrote multiple iterations of incidental music for the show.
With so much history between this particular play and this particular theater, it's not hard to view A Christmas Carol as the quintessence of tradition: a favored adaptation of a well-known fable making its semi-annual return.
Schaefer, who's jointly directing this rendition of A Christmas Carol with Jonah Taylor, admits that tradition — comforting, nostalgic, familiar — is certainly part of its appeal. But even on the main stage, where tradition tends to hold a bit more sway with audiences, there's always room for a little creativity and experimentation. That's one of the reasons why he was keen to work with Taylor.
"At some point this spring, Jonah sent in a really cool pitch. His idea was to align it more to a storyteller perspective and an ensemble cast than the traditional [character- and narrator-driven] approach."
"We kept the Dickens lines but divvied them out to other characters in the ensemble," Taylor explains. "Not having Charles Dickens say these lines really gives it a different feel. So these characters are moving around the stage, coming in and out of scenes, but also driving the story forward with the narration."
The distributed narration isn't the show's only novelty. Of the 27 total cast members, Schaefer estimates that 20 are making their
Civic debut. One of the most visible newer faces is former Tri-Cities native Sam Shick, who performed in last year's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and is now in his first Civic lead role as Ebenezer Scrooge.
"While having familiar performers on stage is great, I think there's something to be said for giving others a new opportunity," Shick says. "It's always good when you come to a show, the lights dim, the curtain opens, and you see people you've never seen before. You hear their talent, you feel their performance. And it's like, wow, this is a revelation."
"While having familiar performers on stage is great, I think there's something to be said for giving others a new opportunity,"
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The three specters are getting a refresh in this production, too. Unlike conventional portrayals, the Ghost of Christmas Past (played by Leland Brownlee) will "spring to the stage," according to Schaefer, and the Ghost of Christmas Present (Kiantha Duncan) will be more like a "favorite aunt" who enters "riding a device — a huge overscale object that all of us know and will recognize."
"We were dreaming about Kiantha," he says. "That's a real get for us because, creatively, she's just exactly what we wanted."
"She just has a powerful presence," Taylor adds.
During rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, the cast and crew had to reckon with an equally powerful presence in the Civic's lobby.
They'd frequently hear stage screams, not to mention lines from their very own production, delivered by the actors temporarily rehearsing there for Every Christmas Story Ever Told (and Then Some!). The high-energy holiday comedy is being staged downstairs in the Firth J. Chew Studio right in the middle of A Christmas Carol's run.
Every Christmas Story cheekily positions itself as an anti-Christmas Carol. Its conceit is that two of its three cast members — real actors playing fictional versions of themselves — are sick to death of Dickens' morality tale and hellbent on staging anything else.
"They've done Christmas Carol so much. They see it every year. They do it every year. So their thought is, why not explore all the other Christmas stories and fit in as many of them as we can?" says Claire Herrmann. She's appearing in each performance alongside Declan Sheehan and Ryan Wasson. Ethan Dennis is the show's official understudy, ready to leap into multiple roles should the need arise.
Before delving into their own humorous version of Scrooge's epiphany, the actors fulfill the promise of the title and zip through a whirlwind of seasonal references and icons: the Grinch, Red Ryder BB guns, It's a Wonderful Life and the red-nosed reindeer that copyright prevents them from mentioning by name.
"There are archetypes that are built into it," Herrmann says. "We have a person that's supposed to be the knowledgeable one about Christmas. We have a person that's a little bit more naive, and we have a person that's almost grumpy. But then we kind of sneak in our own little personalities as well. There's definitely a lot of room for improv in this show."
Some of that improv also takes the form of audience participation. The fourth wall is razed more than once for game show-style trivia and Q&As.
As director, Bryan Durbin says he's leaning into the "wiggle room" of Every Christmas Story and the convenient timing to offer some fun meta-commentary. One exchange has the actors acknowledging that it's impossible to escape A Christmas Carol. They underscore their point with an ostensible live video feed of the production upstairs.
That wry irreverence is very much in keeping with the ethos of the Civic's studio space, which has often inclined toward the edgier, less mainstream side of live theater. And though he's embracing that ethos, Durbin, just like Every Christmas Story, has a genuine fondness for the material he's ribbing. He's played Bob Cratchit in previous Civic productions of A Christmas Carol and even directed the last main-stage production of the show back in 2022.
That's why, despite their competing takes on Christmas spirit, the shows aren't billing themselves as mutually exclusive. The hope is that audiences will take in both and appreciate each for what it has to offer.
"To have a property downstairs that by nature feels immersive, that's lighthearted, is ideal because upstairs on the main stage we're able to present the ever-popular Christmas story with a freshened up approach," Schaefer says. "It's complementary — like salty and sweet." ♦
A Christmas Carol • Nov. 29-Dec. 22; Wed-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm • $15-$41
Every Christmas Story Ever Told (and Then Some!) • Dec. 6-15; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 pm • $15-$29 • Spokane Civic Theatre • 1020 N. Howard St. • spokanecivictheatre.com • 509-325-2507
