Dec. 07, 2011 - Issue #842: Hroses
A Christmas Carol
Until Fri, Dec 23 (7:30 pm), Citadel Theatre, $20 – $103.95
» Ian Jackson, EPIC
"It's an interesting acting exercise, to come back to the same role every year, 12 years later," he says, on a break from rehearsal. "It's neat, because you get to experiment a little. Not too much, but you get to revisit a role—usually you do something once or twice at the most. I've thought of it as kind of an acting clinic for myself.
"It's neat to be able to apply some of the theories that you have about acting, about yourself," Arnold continues. "When you're in a flurry of doing a three-week rehearsal for a one-off show, you get caught up in the blocking, remembering the blocking, remembering the lines, getting used to the story. It's a bit of a whirlwind, as you might imagine. There's a lot to learn, so it's neat to come back to something where you don't have to worry about the lines at all, or the blocking ... you can concentrate on the other stuff, the pure acting part."
Still, the show has seen shifts and changes over its now dozen-year run, and the biggest was a recent one. Last year Tom Wood passed the central, curmudgeonly role of Scrooge on to a new face, Richard McMillan. Arnold notes that within the well-established staging of the show, the two men play their Ebenezer's differently, inadvertently changing the tone slightly to suit their own respective versions of the miser.
"Tom Wood originated the role, and he was brilliant: I just loved working with him. But something I was thinking about just a few days ago—because also James MacDonald is understudying Scrooge, and he's great at it—but I realize that even though the blocking and the lines are the same, every actor has to have their own thought process. You can't completely imitate another actor's performance. It's impossible. You have to find your own thought process through the lines. It's very different; I find it quite different acting with Richard than it was with Tom. Different, but equally as rich."
Until Fri, Dec 23 (7:30 pm)
Directed by Bob Baker
Citadel Theatre, $20 – $103.95
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