You mentioned that you got to go on as Scrooge for one performance. What do you remember about the experience?
I had known ahead of time I was going to go on because Roddy McDowall had it in his contract that he was going to miss this particular performance. The horrible thing about going on for the star is the announcement made to the audience just before the curtain: “At this performance, the role of Scrooge usually played by Roddy McDowell will be played by Rob Donahoe.” Everyone warned me there was going to be booing when my name was announced. Fortunately, because I knew I was going on, my family had flown in from New Mexico and I had a lot of friends there, too. When my name was announced, my family and friends started cheering so I wouldn't hear the boos. That's the main thing I remember. The rest of it is a blur because your adrenaline kicks in.”
Do you remember the response at the end of the show?
I got a standing ovation. And the producers called me to their office afterwards and said, “This is the first time we watched the show where it made us cry.” I was very touched. When the stars did it, the stars were sort of being themselves. They were stars playing Scrooge. I went on as a character actor playing Scrooge and I was determined to do it my way. I thought, “This is my one shot, and it’s gonna be perfect.” So, I was acting my heart out. It was a wonderful experience.
Have your thoughts about and interpretation of the character changed over the years?
When you read the book, he’s described as being this craggy, little old man with a wiry chin and sharp features and a hoarse voice. But over the years we've seen him played by younger men, by women, by different ethnicities. Some productions are set in modern times. I still like going back to the original Dickens. When I first played him as a younger man, I made him very angry. As an older man, I realized he wasn't angry so much as fed up with what he considered the frivolity of the whole thing. If it didn’t make money, what was the point? He was a bit bitter about how his life turned out, and he was very business-minded and focused. So, today I would play him with a lot less anger and more as a level-headed, smart businessman who just thinks everything else is frivolous and not worth bothering with. I think that came with age. When you’re younger and you're asked to play an older man, you tend to think, okay, he’s going to be stooped over and he’s going to walk funny, and he talks like this [he does a clichéd, old-man voice]. Now that I’m turning 70, I think, “I don’t look or talk like that.” This character could have been in his 60s. He’s certainly not stooped over and arthritic, his teeth are not falling out.
You’re going to be reading the book at PBD. What’s the difference between doing the novel and doing the play?
The book is in public domain, so every theatre has its own version of the script because the artistic director can adapt it as a play for his theatre and doesn’t have to pay any royalties. But what I find is, so many people talk down to the audience. They change the words, because they think, “Oh, they're not going to understand that.” They'll Americanize some of the dialogue, they'll drop storylines. They fail to emphasize why Dickens wrote the story in the first place. They want to make it all about Scrooge, this nasty man who sees ghosts. And it's really about rediscovering the joy of Christmas and the humanity that it represents.
I think the most important line in the play is probably in the first scene, when Scrooge’s nephew comes to him in his counting house. Fred says he thinks of Christmas “as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” When Dickens wrote this, Christmas was on a downslide. They didn't really have a lot of traditions that they were maintaining because they thought it was too paganistic. And when Dickens wrote this story, it rejuvenated people’s joy of the humanity of Christmas, and made it a celebration of the season rather than just a religious ceremony. It became a time to celebrate the changing of the season and the bounty of our lives. It's not just Christmas: it’s the winter solstice. I think people tend to forget that the story is more about our humanity than it is about Scrooge. It’s Scrooge rediscovering his own humanity and embracing it again. And in doing so, we all learn that lesson from him.
Are you a collector of A Christmas Carol memorabilia?
To some extent. I have a lot of different copies of A Christmas Carol, including a reprint of the original with all the illustrations. I have the edition that we’re using for this reading. I also have something called A Christmas Carol: The Original Manuscript. It’s in Dickens’ handwriting, and it’s impossible to read. Right now, for Christmas, I’ve got figurines all over the house rather than a Christian creche. I have Scrooge and Marley and the three ghosts standing around them on a table in my front foyer. I have nutcrackers of Scrooge and Marley, and Christmas decorations of Scrooge and Marley. [Yes, the figurines in the photos are his.]
And there’s one other thing. When we worked on Ordinary Americans, I was telling David Kwiat about my obsession with the Lionel Barrymore record set. He said, “I think I have it, but I've never listened to it.” And he gave it to me. It’s not the one that I listened to as a child; it’s a later version. But it’s still Lionel Barrymore.
