Guy Masterson's A CHRISTMAS CAROL Comes to SoHo Playhouse Next Month

Follow Dickens’s beloved tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge. His heart is blackened with greed, as he withholds his wealth and doesn’t believe in the meaning of Christmas. However, throughout Christmas Eve he’s visited by three ghosts to help teach him the meaning of giving and merriment. However, this story is getting a new twist due to the creative genius of Guy Masterson.

Olivier Award winner, West End and Broadway director (of The Shark Is Broken), and Welsh actor Guy Masterson returns to New York with his unique and acclaimed “unmissable” solo production of Dickens’s festive favourite, A Christmas Carol.

“UNIQUE”? In a city awash with Christmas Carols at this time of year, why would Masterson travel 3,500 miles to crowd the market? Because it is an adaptation and performance unlike any other…

No, Masterson does not adorn the stage with Victoriana, nor does he adopt the typical “slippers, dressing gown and nightcap” of most Scrooges. Instead, Masterson - who is renowned for stripping down great works of literature to their essence - brings Dickens’s original performance text alive with nothing but a shabby raincoat and a chair… for Masterson is a globally acclaimed solo performer who specializes in bringing great stories to life with practically nothing but his own body, an extraordinary voice and a mighty text, and this is exactly what New York audiences should expect to see. Dickens as it should be seen and heard, unadorned, unexpanded and uncomplicated.

“It is a union of imagination…My stock phrase is ‘If I can see it you will too”… ” says Masterson. “What I like to do is deliver the words as Dickens himself might have in his illustrious recital tours around the UK and the States which made him a multi-millionaire… The only main difference is that he was reading it and I am performing it. And I’m not a millionaire!”

Masterson made his name bringing Dylan Thomas’s epic poem “Under Milk Wood” to the stage solo in 1994 and has been touring it (over 2000 times) ever since, all 69 characters assiduously recreated using nothing but a pair of pajamas and dark glasses. He followed this up with over 1000 performances of Animal Farm solo playing all the animals with nothing but a bale of hay… A Christmas Carol gets similar treatment but to no lesser effect…

“I got the idea from Dylan Thomas… In the famous opening speech of ‘Under Milk Wood’ which he wrote for the radio, Thomas uses the word ‘Listen’ three times and finally, ‘Look.’ By listening to the richness of his words you actually start “to see”…  In theatre, if you give the audience too much to actually look at, their imaginations will shut down. It’s too passive. What I do is the opposite. I strip everything unnecessary away and demand they engage their imagination… What it creates is spellbinding theatre. Each person ‘sees,’ in that empty space, whatever the words are telling them to see. Their imagination colours it all in… and when they ‘snap out of it’ at the end, they feel they have been a part of it instead of just watching. It is entirely immersive!”

To make this work requires an extraordinary actor and Masterson fits the bill. He comes from rich stock. On his father’s side, Marcello Mastroianni was a cousin, as is Broadway favourite Kate Burton… for his Uncle was none other that Richard Burton who he credits with inspiring him to love words. “He introduced me to Dylan Thomas in 1981,” says Masterson “and the rest is history!”

Masterson started directing in 1993 - ironically a solo play about Burton. “I knew him as very different to public perception. I was trying to put the record straight after all the misleading obituaries and I got the directing bug!” This led to a slew of acclaimed solo plays (including Morecambe, which won an Oliver Award) and this led to bigger projects such as The Shark Is Broken, which harboured on Broadway in August for a 16 week run.

“Ultimately, as Uncle Richard told me; ‘It’s all about the words… Love the words! Love the words!’ And I do… They form the cornerstone of my kind of theatre and audiences love words too. Bells and whistles? Who needs ‘em!”

 So come along to SoHo Playhouse to see A CHRISTMAS CAROL in all its authentic glory. The glory of a great story made up of great words…

For more information or to purchase tickets please visit www.sohoplayhouse.com or call the box office at (212) 691-1555.

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