Assembling Ebenezer Scrooge

There’s a hobby that actor Jennifer Parsons does that reminds Richard Doyle what his annual donning of Ebenezer Scrooge’s top hat and bright red scarf means for him, for her and for audiences of A Christmas Carol.

It’s the same hobby Doyle embraced when he was growing up. And it explains how he sees the multi-generational holiday tradition fitting together.

“It’s like a puzzle. You’re used to putting it together, breaking it apart and putting it back together,” he said. “My wife Jenny Parsons, she’s a puzzle maker and she has a distinct pattern for putting puzzles together. … When I was growing up, my dad was in the Navy, so we moved around a lot. The puzzles went with us. They became a regular part of our Christmas. We’d have holiday puzzles and we’d spend Christmas putting them together.

“You had to take your time and set the pieces in some kind of order. It’s kind of like doing a play. The picture you’re putting together has a story. We’re the ones putting that story together: the actors, the designers, our director. Lo and behold, we have new people. And (director) Hisa Takakuwa is very open to the ideas of people having input into the story. They’re helping put the puzzle together, which is what we do during rehearsals. We want to end up with the same picture we have every year.”

For 39 years, Doyle has helped create A Christmas Carol’s portrait, helping to assemble a theatre mosaic that has captivated generations of Orange County theatregoers who have enjoyed the festive music, joyous dancing and timeless story encompassing how the redemptive spirit of one man can change dozens of lives—for the better.

Now, Doyle enters his fourth live season of portraying that man—Ebenezer Scrooge. He’s played virtually every adult male character in the Charles Dickens classic, but playing Scrooge always makes Doyle dig deep into what makes Scrooge, well, Scrooge. The puzzle of playing one of the most iconic characters of literature, of bringing all the disparate elements of his character to life, is one he enjoys putting together.

And one he enjoys assembling with Takakuwa. The two sit down a month before rehearsals and talk about any script changes from adaptor Jerry Patch, how to keep the story fresh, how to keep Doyle’s ad-libs and quirks relevant and anything else on Doyle’s unceasing mind. Everything’s in play when it comes to the Personality Puzzle of Scrooge.

“As I researched this role again this year, I discovered some things. A lot of what we do as actors is modified by behavior psychology and a lot of that resulted from Sigmund Freud,” he said. “The way the character of Scrooge was impacted by his life and his stern father and his relationship with his sister Fan, who was always soft and gentle and kind. He was part of a Victorian men’s world where the expectations of Victorian men weren’t soft and gentle and kind. If you were a Victorian man not born to the manor, you had to work your way up. You had to be tough.  You had to embrace life as a business and lord it over people of lesser means.

“The interesting thing as I began to look at that and realize that the origin of things like spirits, spectres and ghosts is all of those have Biblical origins. Your spirit was your soul. What the Spirits were showing Scrooge are products of his own soul—his inner self. That he has taken his physical body and built it up to cover up his soul. The Spirits show him there’s a goodness to him, a kindness, an understanding of gentleness and they’ve given him an instrument to understand you can reach out and help people of lesser means than you.”

Doyle said that research into behavioral psychology, which he pointed out wasn’t around when Dickens wrote his masterpiece in 1842, helped him discover the key to what he called “the hardest scene to find the truth in”—when Scrooge shows up at his nephew Fred’s for Christmas dinner. It comes a “day” after Scrooge kicks his nephew out of his office and hurls his gift back at him—the same gift Fred leaves for him to later discover.

“He shows up wearing Fred’s gift. He’s expecting a severe tongue-lashing, probably what his father would have given him,” Doyle said. “What he gets is Fred’s incredible heart, which he inherited from his mother, Fan. And Fred accepts him. That’s the truth of that moment, when Fred embraces him, Sally embraces him and everyone embraces him. … We have again found that moment in rehearsal and we’re putting the play together to support the story and the truth that makes that happen.”

As Doyle tells that story, he breaks off for a moment to return to the puzzle analogy. He said creating A Christmas Carolon stage is a much more complex puzzle than even Dickens imagined. You can’t merely dump pieces out of a box, mix them up and put them seamlessly together.

There’s an art, a craft to assembling this puzzle. Doyle said that Dickens told it in person during his speaking tours “pretty effectively. Because it was his story.”

It’s become one of Doyle’s favorite stories out of the 131 other productions he has been a part of at SCR. Being an integral piece in this puzzle, helping to assemble it for comfort-seeking audiences, is a role he eagerly anticipates every year.

“It’s hard work. I wish I was 30 years younger going at this,” he said. “I feel very honored and very fortunate to have this opportunity at this point of my life. I am the last active member of SCR’s founding company and this is an honor for me. I’m proud to be able to do it and very pleased I am still up to making it happen.”