FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 7, 2005

HUMBUG!

Saint John Theatre Company brings Scrooge to Saint John

When the Saint John Theatre Company offered Saint John native Robert McLardy the chance to play the meanest old miser in literary history, he thought the idea was anything but a humbug.

“The Saint John Theatre Company is an astonishing institution,” Mr. McLardy says.  “It’s astonishing because of its ambitions, because of the professional attitude that people take, because of their determination to put on something as close to a professional production as possible.”

Mr. McLardy, who moved to Ottawa in 2001, is back in Saint John to portray Ebenezer Scrooge, the insufferable anti-Yuletide grouch, in A Christmas Carol.   The production opens November 17 at the Imperial Theatre.

Mr. McLardy is rehearsing with a dynamic cast of almost 40 amateur actors, including children as young as seven.  For him, becoming Scrooge means memorizing an enormous number of lines, cultivating his scowl and growl -- and working up a sweat.

“It’s a lot of emotion,” he says, blotting perspiration from his brow during a break at rehearsal.  “It’s a man undergoing an emotional crisis almost from the beginning of the play to the end.  So you have to draw on a lot of emotional energy.”

 Bob Doherty, the director of the play, says Mr. McLardy is bringing great insight, talent and creativity to the role. “The audience has to dislike the man Scrooge has become, but they must also see how wounded he is,” Mr. Doherty explains.  “Robert brings to the role exactly the thing it needs -- the ability to balance the rasping, cold edge of Scrooge along with the vulnerable, emotional core of the character.”

This particular script of A Christmas Carol has never been performed on a stage. Mr. Doherty collaborated with SJTC artistic director Stephen Tobias to adapt it from the famous novel by Charles Dickens.

“The script is not telling a fairy tale about how a mean old man became a good old man and everybody loves him,” Mr. McLardy says.  “It’s telling a quite serious story about how a man who has created a life for himself that he now finds impossible to go on living manages to change.  He manages to break through that and find a way to live again.”

Curtain time for A Christmas Carol is 8 P.M. on November 17, 18 and 19.  There are matinee performances at 2 P.M. on November 19 and 20.  As a special treat for the kids, Santa Claus will be at the Imperial Theatre after the November 20 matinee.  Tickets range in price from $15.00 to $27.50 and are available by calling the Imperial Theatre Box Office at 674-4100 or 1-800-323-SHOW.

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