Tiny Tim's Christmas Carol At Adventure Theatre
We’re in the second week of rehearsals for Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol at Adventure Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland. The play is a retelling of the Charles Dickens classic told from Tiny Tim’s point of view, and it was not only exhilarating writing it, but it’s been equally exhilarating watching this cast bring the script to life. Here are the roles and the actors:
Chris Dinolfo plays Tiny Tim
Conrad Feininger is Scrooge
Brittany Martz plays Tiny Tim’s best friend Charlotte
Megan Dominy plays the Puppet Seller
Phil Reid is the Pie Seller,
and Danny Pushkin plays the Book Seller.
Jerry Whiddon is directing and in my humble opinion he is one of the great directors of the American theatre. The producer is the talented Michael Bobbitt, who runs Adventure Theatre.
I worked with Jerry and Michael three years ago when I wrote ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas for the same theatre. The big difference this year is that I have a co-author: my 18-year-old son Jack, who is a senior in high school.
The designs for the show are particularly wonderful. Dan Conway (set designer) and I worked together recently when he designed the incredible set for the world premiere of The Game’s Afoot at Cleveland Play House. The notion behind the current set is that the stage itself is a Victorian theatre. So we have a theatre within a theatre.
The nifty sound design is by Neil McFadden, the great lighting is by Martha Mountain, Dre Moore is in charge of the hundreds of props, and the costumes are by Collin Ranney. As you can see, the costumes are gorgeous
.The idea of the piece is that Scrooge wants to keep Tiny Tim’s father, Bob Cratchit, working on Christmas day, so Tiny Tim and his friend Charlotte come up with the idea of confronting Scrooge with his past life so that he’ll see the light and repent. To do this, they team up with their friends from the streets of London, the Pie Seller, the Puppet Seller and the Book Seller, to create Scrooge’s past. So it ends up being a sort of play within a play in a theatre within a theatre.
The show runs from November 14 through January 1 and I hope that everybody comes to see it.