The Geffen Playhouse presents Independent Shakespeare Co.'s production of A Christmas Carol with Charles Dickens, featuring David Melville as Charles Dickens, adapted by David Melville and Melissa Chalsma and directed by Melissa Chalsma. A Christmas Carol will have a single performance on Monday, December 1 at 7:00pm in the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse.
Melville is already playing a different Dickens in the extended run of The Gospel According to
Thomas Jefferson,
Charles Dickens and Count
Leo Tolstoy: Discord by
Scott Carter, which continues its run through December 7. In the play Dickens,
Thomas Jefferson, and
Leo Tolstoy are brought together and have a blistering battle of wits over the Bible and other topics.
A Christmas Carol with
Charles Dickens is performed by Independent Shakespeare Co. (ISC) co-founder
David Melville as Dickens, playing nearly every character in the story with musical accompaniment and dramatic interjections by Julia Aks. A Christmas Carol with
Charles Dickens will also be performed on other December dates at the Independent Studio (
www.iscla.org).
In his lifetime,
Charles Dickens was recognized not only as a great writer, but as an actor. His greatest successes on the stages of Britain and the United States were his solo performances of his own work. Women were known to faint in horror at his portrayal of Sikes murdering Nancy when he performed Oliver Twist. One of the first pieces he presented to great acclaim was A Christmas Carol.
In what has become a holiday tradition, ISC re-creates (with a little artistic license) the experience of a public reading given by Mr. Dickens himself, based on the novelist's own adaptation. This is ISC's tenth year presenting A Christmas Carol with
Charles Dickens.
Melville said, "It's humbling how many people return every year to see it and that they've made it their Christmas tradition. What's unique about it is that because it's presented by
Charles Dickens, you hear Dickens' narrative as he wrote it rather than as a dramatization that leaves his voice out of it. It contains a surprising amount of humor and his attitude towards his characters is perhaps not as sentimental as you might think. But it's always moving because it's about an act of forgiveness and redemption."
The performance is full of the acting pyrotechnics Dickens was famous for as the two actors conjure a magical evening full of wry humor, ghosts, romance, and redemption.
David Melville is co-founder of Independent Shakespeare Co. and the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival. Roles for ISC include Hamlet, Richard II, Iago, Macbeth, Henry V, Benedick, Dr. Pinch, Feste, 8 seasons as
Charles Dickens performing A Christmas Carol, a one-person Nicholas Nickleby,
Charles Dickens in Discord, WH Ireland in the one man show Solemn Mockeries and Beauty Smith in the original musical Red Barn. As a composer David has written the music for most of ISC's Shakespeare productions, Red Barn and many of the songs for Dr Pinch's vaudeville show. London appearances include the Almeida Theatre productions of Hamlet (also Broadway) and Ivanov (both of which featured
Ralph Fiennes), Mother Courage (with
Glenda Jackson) and Henry VI in The Wax King (The Man in the Moon). TV and film includes: Lawrence of America; Ironclad; The Understudy and Perfection. Earlier in his career, David was a private detective and then brand ambassador for Bombay Sapphire - traveling the United States preaching the virtues of gin and discussing golf with liquor executives. David trained at the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
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