A CHRISTMAS CAROL
An Evening With Charles Dickens
A One Man Show
December 7 - Dec 20, 2008
The Cast
Charles Dickens................................Tom Fulton
The Crew
Artistic Director of FPAC ...................Fred Sternfeld
Lighting Design...................................Ben Neeham
Stage Manager....................................Tod Huffman
Producer.........................................Shirley Kolenic
Costumer ..................................Kathleen Hardesty
Stage Adaptation ..................................Tom Fulton
The Play
Act One
Stave One: Marley's Ghost
Stave Two: The First of the Three Spirits
There will be a 10 minute intermission
Act Two
Stave Three: The Second of the Three Spirits
Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits
ABOUT THE PLAY
A CHRISTMAS CAROL - AN EVENING WITH CHARLES DICKENS, starring executive director and veteran professional actor Tom Fulton opened on Friday, December 12 at 7:30 p.m. and played five performances only through December 20.
This one-man show is modeled after the performances Charles Dickens himself brought to America to great acclaim in the 1860's.
Mr. Fulton has been performing A CHRISTMAS CAROL for many years both privately and for the public.
In spite of the frightening and sometimes terrifying packages laid under this old ghost story’s tree, A Christmas Carol is ultimately a heart-rending and joyful morality tale of an old and bitter miser. The story has been a perennial Christmastime favorite. Ebenezer Scrooge undergoes a profound experience of redemption over the course of one night. He finds if he doesn’t change his ways he will end up like his friend Jacob Marley, walking the Earth forever, being nothing but invisible and lonely.
This particular production is unique in that it doesn't use sets, or fly lines, or great hordes of children singing Christmas Carols, or rows of bell ringers and flute players dancing jigs. Instead it reaches into your imagination with words only. Told on simple stage, with only a chair, a table and a podium, and the brilliant narration and the sound of a single human voice. This is old fashioned storytelling, where the audience is transported to Dicken's England (circa 1830); to the back alleys, the financial quarter, the slums, the townhouses and the carriage-driven world of the wealthy and most importantly the otherwordly fogs and mists on which ride the spirits of Christmas. All in ever astonishing, ever joyous, ever heartbreaking images. All in a sound. All from Dickens' pen directly into the air of the auditorium.
Audiences of this production will hear 'A Christmas Carol' - perhaps - for the first time - not only the words of the dialogue, which have become as familiar as our favorite holiday carols, but rather the strains of the brilliant narration so unique to Dickens and so utterly filled with a holiday spirit and wit of their own.
Remember what it was like to be read a bedtime story?
Well... “Once upon a time...Marley was dead, to begin with....
You can look at this shirt until you're eyes ache, but you'll
not find a threadbard place in it, Joe...
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"If I could work my will, every idiot who goes around with a Merry Christmas on his lips ought to be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart, he should!
A Merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!
You were born to make your fortune and you'll certainly do it!
I will live in the past, the present and the future. The spirits of all three will reside within me. Oh, Jacob Marley, I thank thee! On My knees, old Jacob, on my knees!
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