[NEohioPAL]Largely Literary's "Christmas Carol" at Greystone

[Mark Dawidziak]

Acclaimed version of A Christmas Carol moving to Greystone
Here They Come A-Carol-ing
    The Largely Literary Theater Company’s acclaimed version of Charles
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol will have a new home this holiday season. The
two-act adaptation for three actors is moving to downtown Akron’s
Greystone Hall & Theatre for a four-performance run: Dec. 10, 17 and 18
at 8 p.m. and Dec. 12 at 3 p.m.
    Tickets are $12 for balcony seats and $15 for floor seating. Group
rates are available. Dinner will be available on select nights prior to
the performance for an additional charge.  For information and
reservations, call 330-761-1950.
    Greystone is located at 103 S. High Street, with several convenient
parking options adjacent to the building (free during performances).
Open to the public, Greystone is the former Masonic Temple, completely
renovated to offer elegant dining and theater experiences.
    “All three are excellent actors who make this staging of A Christmas
Carol a most intimate experience,” the Akron Beacon Journal said of the
Largely Literary Theater Company’s production. “This adaptation of A
Christmas Carol taps into Dickens’ heavy theme of darkness, which is
often glossed over in other adaptations.”
    The production also was acclaimed as “a wonderful version” by the
Dickens Fellowship, the 100-year-old organization dedicated to the study
of the author’s life and works. And Cleveland Scene said “this quiet,
faithful take” on Dickens’ story “is restrained, reserved, and
charmingly quaint.”
    A Christmas Carol is director Mark Dawidziak’s adaptation of the
beloved story by Dickens. The basic concept is that the audience has
gathered to hear Dickens give one of his popular readings of the story
about miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.
    Dickens (played by Dawidziak) appears on stage, opens the book and
starts reading the familiar words, “Marley was dead to begin with. . . ”
As the “reading” progresses, a second actor (Tom Stephan) appears as
Scrooge. This is the only role he plays as the story literally comes to
life around Dickens.
    The third actor, Sara Showman, plays almost all the other roles –
men and women, ghosts and mortals – with Dickens moving in and out of
the action as a third voice is needed.
     “The idea is to draw the audience in,” Dawidziak says, “asking them
to use their imagination to see everything Dickens is describing. Most
changes of character for Sara occur in front of the audience, using
slight changes in attitude, costume and props. A few set pieces – a
trunk, tables, some chairs – are constantly shifted by the cast to
suggest various scenes, everything being used and reused as
imaginatively as possible. The goal here is a production that’s part
play, part reader’s theater and part experimental theater.”
    Given this approach and the use of Dickens’ original language, the
production is recommended for high school students and older. Its
premiere run was 11 performances in December 2002, including three
sold-out shows at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. During the last the two
years, it also has been staged at such Northeast Ohio venues as the
Cleveland Library, Akron’s Coach House Theatre and the Nordonia Hills
Branch Library.
    The play is presented in two acts, and the entire production runs
about 90 minutes (with an intermission).
    A Christmas Carol launches the Largely Literary Theater Company’s
first home season at Greystone. It will be followed by Robert Louis
Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses (April 2-3), an adaptation for
two actors, and The Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated (May
21-22), Dawidziak’s two-act collection of Mark Twain sketches for five
actors.
    The Largely Literary Theater Company was founded in 2002 by
Dawidziak and Showman to stage their version of A Christmas Carol.
Specializing in faithful adaptations of classic literature, the
company’s dual mission is to promote interest in reading and live
theater.

Biographies for Christmas Carol company

Mark Dawidziak (director, plays Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol)
has been a theater, film and television critic for twenty-five years.
Since July of 1999, he has been the TV critic at the Cleveland Plain
Dealer. During his fifteen years at the Akron Beacon Journal, he held
such posts as TV columnist, movie critic and critic-at-large. His nine
published books include a novel, Grave Secrets (1994), and such
non-fiction works as The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible (1982),
The Columbo Phile: A Casebook (1989), Night Stalking (1991), Mark My
Words: Mark Twain on Writing (1996), The Night Stalker Companion: A 25th
Anniversary Tribute (1997) and Horton Foote’s The Shape of the River:
The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain (2003). He is currently collaborating
with Paul Bauer on a biography of “hobo writer” Jim Tully. His 1982
play, To Preserve, Protect and Defend, a two-act drama about Abraham
Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, has been produced on both sides of the
Mason-Dixon line. His two-act adaptation of sketches by Mark Twain, The
Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, was entered into the
American College Theater Festival in 1998. A journalism graduate of
George Washington University, he was born in Huntington, New York. He
lives in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with his wife, actress Sara Showman, and
their daughter, Rebecca “Becky” Claire. His stage roles include E.K.
Hornbeck in Inherit the Wind, the Writer in Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor
and the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. He and Showman started the Largely
Literary Theater Company in 2002.

    Tom Stephan (Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol) combined his
acting avocation with his vocational pursuits for 31 years before he
retired from English and drama teaching at Stow-Munroe Falls High
School. He was recognized as a “child star" at the age of seven when he
first appeared onstage in Canton, Ohio, but it was actually at the age
of 21 when he began teaching school that the drama bug bit once more. He
started with a supporting role in a Stow Players production, and has now
been seen in over 60 major productions in the greater Akron-Canton area,
including the Weathervane Playhouse, Coach House Theater, Goodyear
Theater, the old Bath Players, and the Players Guild of Canton. He has
won three Best Actor and one Best Supporting Actor Awards from the
Weathervane Playhouse, and was honored by the State Department of
Education for implementation of a middle school program called “Drama in
the Classroom.” For 15 years he has either succumbed as murder victim or
triumphed as scoundrel in numerous “Mysteries by Moushey,” audience
interactive murder mysteries, in the Akron/Cleveland/Canton area.
Several years ago he branched out into radio and TV, serving as
spokesman and voice-over talent for commercial and industrial work. As a
retired teacher, he intends to pursue acting, voice work, radio-TV,
commercial work, and all other performance ventures that look both
interesting and lucrative.

    Sara Showman (14 roles in A Christmas Carol) has appeared in many
productions in Ohio since moving to the Akron area in 1983. She has
worked with professional companies, as well as college, children’s and
community theaters. She has appeared at Kent State, Weathervane, Coach
House Theatre, the Beck Center for the Performing Arts, the Canton
Players Guild, Porthouse Theatre Company, the Working Theater and Actors
Summit Theater. An Equity membership candidate, she earned a bachelor of
fine arts degree in acting and directing from Kent State University.
Favorite roles include Bella in Lost in Yonkers, Melissa in Love
Letters, Clara in I’m Not Rappaport and Shirley in Shirley Valentine.
She also has appeared in four Shakespeare productions at Stan Hywet.
Before moving to Ohio, she appeared in several productions for theater
companies in her native Tennessee, including Another Part of the Forest,
A Little Night Music, A Streetcar Named Desire, Ten Little Indians and
Inherit the Wind.
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