“Jacob Marley’s A Christmas Carol” is a journey that takes you to hell and back.
The play, told from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol’s” Marley’s perspective. Marley, who was Scrooges’ business partner and longtime associate.
The story opens with Marley’s death. Marley, played by sophomore Andrew Bullard, a theater major from Page, Ariz., is given the opportunity in the spirit world to redeem his soul if he can create in Scrooge, played by senior Joseph Ahern a junior theater major from Muldrow, Okla., a complete and willing change of heart.
In this version of the story, there are a couple of additional characters. One of them, the Bogle, played by Justine Davis, a sophomore theater major from Draper, is a sharp-witted, no nonsense and tough-loving kind of creature, heavily invested in Marley’s redemption. Together they mastermind the diabolical scheme played out on Scrooge in Dickens’ version.
The play, directed by DSC professor of theater Varlo Davenport, is a black light puppet show. Last year Davenport directed “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Foreigner.”
Davenport decided to use puppets for two reasons. One was practical and the other was educational.
“There are a number of stage effects that we couldn’t afford to do if we were using real life actors,” he said. “Second, as an actor training program, there is a lot that an actor can learn from voicing and manipulating a puppet.”
The show is being presented as a fundraiser to help several theater students and faculty members go to Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest avant-garde theater festival in the world where they will perform “(The) Odyssey” an adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey” written by DSC associate professor of Theater Michael Harding.
Jacob Marley’s “A Christmas Carol” is being presented at 7:30 p.m in the Black Box Theatre in the Eccles Fine Arts Center. Show dates are Dec. 4-8, 14, 15, 17-22.
Written for Dixie Sun News by Josh Wallis
