Kansas City Rep to present ‘Christmas Carol’ after all. But it will be very different

The Kansas City Repertory Theatre boasts a tradition 40 years in the making, and it’s not going to let even a once-in-a-century pandemic destroy that.

COVID-19 wiped out the Rep’s production of “A Christmas Carol” at Spencer Theatre, but the show will go on — virtually, with an unconventional presentation — artistic director Stuart Carden announced Wednesday. The 40th anniversary production will be an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novella rather than a staged theatrical version.

“It’s a fireside storytelling approach to the novella with five of our favorite local artists,” Carden said.

Gary Neal Johnson, who for years played Ebenezer Scrooge, along with fellow actors Walter Coppage, John Rensenhouse, Vanessa Severo and Bri Woods, each will read a chapter. The five will be filmed separately on the same COVID-compliant set.

The public can arrange to watch the final 90-minute product at kcrep.org for $65 per household starting Nov. 23. A one-time viewing will be available through Dec. 31.

Carden said he wrote this adaptation based on a performance script of the novella Dickens used when he toured Europe and the United States in 1853.

“This is something we’ve been so committed to since the beginning of the pandemic, trying to find a way to share ‘A Christmas Carol’ with the community,” he said.

In August, Rep officials announced the cancellation of the season because of COVID-19 and were mourning the loss of theater as well as the financial windfall from “A Christmas Carol,” always the Rep’s biggest moneymaker. But since then, the Rep has announced new ways to do theater.

This telling of the Scrooge story will be KC Rep’s second event of a reimagined 2020-21 season, following the success of the hybrid concert and ghost story, “Ghost Light: A Haunted Night of Songs and Stories from KC’s Cultural Crossroads.” Its six shows on the South Lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the final three of which will be Oct. 29-31, have sold out.

In both cases, the revenue will barely put a dent in the losses KC Rep has incurred because of the cancellation of all its 2020 stage performances. In that regard, it is in the same boat with every other area professional theater company.

KC Rep executive director Angela Gieras said she merely hopes to break even financially with “A Christmas Carol.”

“I would say for both the board and the staff, the decision of doing ‘A Christmas Carol’ was a decision of mission rather than money,” she said. “To be able to go into our patrons’ homes with ‘A Christmas Carol’ at this time seems like the right thing to do for this 40th anniversary.”

Similarly, the Kansas City Ballet’s wildly popular annual production of “The Nutcracker” was canceled in early July along with the rest of the 2020 schedule because of COVID-19. But the company announced “The Holiday Show” in its stead — in person to a limited audience.

Gieras said KC Rep has long-term plans to cope with the continuing pandemic: “We expect the recovery will take five years.”

This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 12:55 PM.

Dan Kelly

The Kansas City Star

Dan Kelly has been covering entertainment and arts news at The Star since 2009. He previously worked at the Columbia Daily Tribune, The Miami Herald and The Louisville Courier-Journal. He also was on the University of Missouri School of Journalism faculty for six years, and he has written two books, most recently “The Girl with the Agate Eyes: The Untold Story of Mattie Howard, Kansas City’s Queen of the Underworld.”