INTERVIEW: Travel back to 1867 for this retelling of ‘A Christmas Carol’
Photo: John Kevin Jones co-adapted and stars in A Christmas Carol at the Merchant’s House Museum. Photo courtesy of PR rep / Provided with permission.
A Christmas Carol at the Merchants’ House, Charles Dickens in New York, 1867, starring the incomparable John Kevin Jones, is a holiday treat that has been enjoyed by many theatergoers over the past few years. The Christmas-themed solo show finds Jones presenting an authentic retelling of A Christmas Carol, Dickens’ famous novella. The special treat? The script for the evening is actually based off one that the author used when he toured the United States for speaking engagements in 1867.
Performances of A Christmas Carol continue through Jan. 5 at the atmospheric and historic Merchant’s House on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This stately house is beautifully restored and serves as an excellent example of period architecture, according to its official website. The humble historic abode is recognized as a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Jones’ theatrical magic takes place in the house’s parlor, meaning it’s quite easy for audience members to envision themselves in the late 19th century.
For Jones, this is an annual labor of love.
“I think that falling in love with the text of A Christmas Carol came really as I was working on speaking these words,” Jones said in a recent phone interview. “When you’re reading something that has some deep and deeper meanings, as a younger person sometimes it’s harder to grasp those things. But as I got older, I was doing a lot of the Christmas Carols in regional theater, and so that really was not Dickens’ script or Dickens’ words. That was not something that was connecting with me necessarily, but when I started working on just his words and when I reread the text before we started working on it, all of a sudden it did jump back out at me. These things really did make a great deal more sense.”
Jones and director Rhonda Dodd became entranced by Dickens’ actual words, and the found themselves utterly pulled into his world. Then, during the development of this theatrical evening, modern times started to combine with the lessons from 150 years ago, and Jones was hooked.
“At the same time, the protestors at Zuccotti Park had started, and the 1 percent protests had begun,” he said. “And we sort of saw a correlation there in the time that we were living in and what was being written about in this story, and so that was overlapped I suppose and gave it even more resonance. And then as we have continued to work on it, I think it just gets deeper and deeper because his ability to really flesh out universal themes in broader conflict is unparalleled, at least for his time and maybe even since.”
Jones appreciates that goodwill and treating others with respect have a timeless quality. This universality doesn’t seem to have an expiration date, evidenced by the constant sold-out performances at the Merchant’s House. In the seven years of presenting this classic, there has hardly been an open seat for any individual performance. Perhaps audience members are starved for meaningful, joy-filled entertainment.
“As we have progressed since the Zuccotti Park time, we’ve seen that rise, and we’ve seen that fall,” Jones said. “It’s incumbent on artists around the world to keep it aloft, to keep respect moving, so that’s really when it first hit me, when we were first working on these pieces and started to get into these characters and feel what they were feeling and see where their characters were leading me. All of that was very powerful.”
The first two years of this classic Christmas Carol were actually not performed at the Merchant’s House. Instead, Jones took the text on a little tour, similar to what Dickens did in 1867. He would perform the piece in friends’ homes, and then eventually he landed at Theatre Row in Midtown Manhattan. The piece truly took off when Jones metaphorically knocked on the Merchant’s House door and asked to be let in. The candlelit atmosphere of the place, which is now a museum, struck him almost immediately.
“[The atmosphere] certainly does help propel a lot of the sentiment and feeling within the piece,” the actor said. “I think that his way of speaking in that space does resonate quite a bit. I think bringing people into the space, it does create a sense of reverence for the moment because we are in a special place, and because it’s not just me standing on stage in front of you with the set behind me that’s creating that special case. It’s all of us being encapsulated in that space and creating a special place together in this beautiful home, so I think it does help me to bring the audience into a focused idea of what it is we’re about to experience.”
The original story is believed to have come to Dickens like a lightning bolt, and he finished the draft of the novella in only a few weeks.
“I think sometimes when that happens, it’s real inspiration,” Jones surmised. “It’s real rounded stuff, and certainly that’s what this feels like to me. But, yes, he did do readings of this, and part of the reason why he did readings was not only because as an author he wanted to get his work out there, but also because he wanted to get paid for his work. And with the copyright laws as they were then, people could publish his stories without paying him a dime. And I think he was actually working behind the scenes with political leaders in order to try to create real copyright laws, real protections for creative artists that bring these things to bear and put them into the world, so that they’re not losing their interest in it.”
He added: “People say that he was moved when he read this story, that his own emotions and his own feelings were quite apparent as he read the story, and I totally get that because certainly that happens to me. There are moments in this story that sometimes strike me, and I have to pause for a moment to catch myself, to get myself back, to move myself through a moment that I find particularly moving and get on with the story and tell that next bit. He did, and I think he was very successful at it. I hope I do some justice to his work.”
Now in its seventh sold-out year of performances, it’s fair to say Jones is giving the piece plenty of justice.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
A Christmas Carol at the Merchants’ House, Charles Dickens in New York, 1867, plays through Jan. 5 at the Merchant’s House Museum on East Fourth Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
