Longtime Scrooge actor returns with solo version of Dickens classic
John D. Huston has performed Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol more than 700 times in his career.
Thanks to COVID-19, it's going to be a unique performance in Saskatoon this year — but the pandemic wasn't going to stop Huston from returning to the city.
“The first time I did Saskatoon was 1994,” he said. “It's lovely to be coming back, maybe especially because it's a trying time.”
Huston's solo performance of the holiday classic will take place at The Refinery Dec. 2-4, with the show on the last day being livestreamed. After performing the work around North America for almost 30 years now, this will be Huston's first time putting his performance online.
That's not to say Huston hasn't changed up his performance before. In fact, he says shows are rarely the same each time around. Certain lines and vignettes will make it into some shows, and not others.
It happens on short notice. Huston says early in the show he tries to get a read on the audience before he decides to make the show lean toward melancholy, humorous, heartfelt, or somewhere in between.
It helps that, along with performing A Christmas Carol every year, he reads the original Dickens book. At this point he doesn't exactly find anything new every time he reads it, but different lines of text will jump out at him during each read.
“I don't get tired of this story,” Huston said. “If I wasn't loving this, I don't think I would keep on doing it.”
He doesn't live in the area anymore, but he has a history with Saskatoon and Saskatoon theatre. As a one-time resident of the city, Huston said he was involved with the early days of Live Five Theatre, and he has a penchant for the coffee shops and restaurants along Broadway — preferences developed from his time living in the Nutana area.
And with so many performances over his career, Huston has seen all sorts of audiences. From drunken hecklers to children who watch the one-man show with wide eyes, Huston is used to all of it, and the text still brings him to tears.
“There are a few moments when I do the show, almost 30 years in, and I still am walking that tightrope of `I want to do full justice to this passage, but I can't lose it myself,'” he said.
Something else he's used to is people telling him he's left out their favourite scenes — and having to explain that some of the most famous scenes in movie versions of A Christmas Carol weren't in the original text.
There are audience members who come to the show every year — not to be surprised by the ending, but to appreciate the memorable characters and enduring themes that made A Christmas Carol one of the defining influences on modern Christmas as we know it.
“It is such a simple story, on the one hand ... We all know the person who, like Scrooge, walks around in their own little cloud of `get away from me,'” Huston said. “And even for that person, there's hope. Even that person is worthy of our attention and affection ... even that person can rediscover their humanity.”