‘A Connecticut Christmas Carol” transports Charles Dickens’ Olde England to a little town called East Haddam in New England. The show, though set at the Goodspeed Opera House, is having its premiere at Goodspeed Musicals’ other performance space: the Norma Terris Theatre in nearby Chester.
The reworking of the holiday classic takes place in 1925, when Dicken’s original “Christmas Carol” novella had been around for more than 80 years, and the Goodspeed Opera House was slated to close after nearly half a century. “A Connecticut Christmas Carol” begins with East Haddam-based international superstar actor William Gillette being asked to perform the role of Scrooge as the final performance ever at the Goodspeed (the building was renovated and reopened in the late 1950s).
Other Connecticut historical figures added to the update include Harriet Beecher Stowe, P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain as the ghost of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future. Dickens’ Jacob Marley character is portrayed as the Connecticut-raised financier J.P. Morgan. The jolly Mr. Fezziwig becomes theater founder William Goodspeed. The names Sikorsky and Wadsworth also come up.
The Goodspeed is hoping “A Connecticut Christmas Carol” will develop into a seasonal staple, much like “A Christmas Carol — A Ghost Story of Christmas” at Hartford Stage and “Christmas on the Rocks” at TheaterWorks.
The show’s creators LJ Fecho (book) and Michael O’Flaherty (music and lyrics) first developed the musical for another locale entirely. Originally conceived as “The Belsnickel Scrooge,” it ran for three seasons at the Genesius Theatre, which Fecho runs in Reading, Penn. The Dickens tale was combined with the Pennsylvania Dutch legend of the holiday mischief-maker Belsnickel and set during the Great Depression.
“I hail from Reading, which is where Michael is from as well,” Fecho says in a phone interview. “We met at the Genesius Theatre, which was a place for young people to really get involved with theater.” In addition to “The Belsnickel Scrooge,” Fecho and O’Flaherty wrote “Genesius — The Musical,” about the history of the theater; it had a reading at the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in 2008.
“A few years ago,” Fecho continues, “[Goodspeed Executive Director] Michael Gennaro was looking for a Christmas show, and I said to Michael ‘Why don’t we take the Belsnickel Scrooge?’ There’s not really a regional accent up here, as in Reading. This was an opportunity to use historical characters. We added pieces of Connecticut.”
O’Flaherty credits Fecho as the one who decided Stowe, Barnum and Twain would represent the ghosts. “The score, the composer says, has “survived more intact than the script did” since the show’s Belsnickel days. “We did add one complete new song, a fun little number about ganging up on Scrooge and telling him how good Christmas can be.”
O’Flaherty has been the resident music director at the Goodspeed for 26 years. Just before starting rehearsals for “A Connecticut Christmas Carol,” he was working on the current Opera House show “Rags.” He won’t be the music director on his own show; that position is being taken by Dan Pardo so that O’Flaherty can focus on his score. The show is being directed by Hunter Foster (who directed “The Circus in Winter” at the Norma Terris in 2014) and choreographed by Lisa Shriver.
As befits any show at the Norma Terris — the Goodspeed’s designated developmental space for new works — “we were still rewriting as of yesterday,” O’Flaherty says. “That’s a good thing. We’ve gotten terrific input from the cast.”
The show stars Lenny Volpe (the captain from “Showboat” at the Goodspeed in 2011), Michael Thomas Holmes as all the ghosts, Matt Gibson as Bob Cratchit and Robert Berson as Tiny Tim with a seven-person ensemble that handles dozens of other characters.
The show is at the Norma Terris Theatre this season, but the hope is that the show will eventually play at the very Goodspeed Opera House where part of it is set.
As for the mid-1920s time period, “we wanted to take it out of Dickensian London,” O’Flaherty says. But the story, Fecho says, remains “Dickens’ amazing holiday story of rebirth.”
Both Fecho and O’Flaherty emphasize that “A Connecticut Christmas Carol” is, as the composer puts it, “fun and upbeat.” “It’s a lot more lighthearted than a lot of ‘Christmas Carol’s, Fecho says. “It’s got a lot of humor, a lot of joy.”
And a lot of Nutmeg cheer.
A Connecticut Christmas Carol runs through Dec. 30 at the Norma Terris Theatre, 33 N. Main St., Chester. Performances are Wednesdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays at 8 p.m.; and Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 2 and 6:30 p.m. $54 to $59. 860-873-8668, goodspeed.org.
