Sanjay Talwar takes multitasking to festive new heights, playing all of A Christmas Carol's characters
In solo feat, Shaw and Stratford veteran roots out the vivid details in Dickens’s original story
Sanjay Talwar stages a one-man A Christmas Carol. Photo by Jam Hamidi
The Firehall Arts Centre presents Blue Bridge Theatre’s A Christmas Carol from December 14 to 24
BY ANY MEASURE, playing Ebenezer Scrooge would be a monumental role to tackle at Christmastime. But in his new solo show A Christmas Carol, Shaw and Stratford festival veteran Sanjay Talwar not only brings the old miser to life, but close to 40 other characters, from Jacob Marley to Fezziwig to little Tiny Tim—as well as a top-hatted narrator who bears a striking resemblance to Charles Dickens himself.
It is an epic feat of multitasking, accent-shifting, and sheer memorization. The affable actor, speaking from the Shaw home turf of Niagara-on-the-Lake before heading out to Vancouver for his show at the Firehall Arts Centre, says the actual experience of performing A Christmas Carol alone is difficult to describe.
“When the cast is just me, there's nobody to save you when it goes wrong,” he begins with a laugh. “It’s a real adventure in finding the moment and just trusting yourself. For me, I’m always looking for: Who do I get to play with? So it's the audience or the technical aspects–it’s just finding whatever connections you can make, wherever they are. Because everything in theatre is dialogue….Every day that I do the story, it follows its own path, so in a strange way I feel in control of it, but not in control.
“I’ve had lots to say in the plays I’ve done before but never this much!” he adds. “But it’s funny: by creating these different characters it doesn't feel like such a long monologue.”
The sound and lighting design are also like other characters in the production, he adds, making him feel a lot less alone onstage (where he performs in a Victorian parlour by a fireplace.)
Amid his most challenging scenes is the Cratchit family Christmas, in which he both narrates the action and plays each character at the humble dinner.
“I don't know how much I want to give away,” he hints, “but with my tongue firmly in my cheek I’ve decided that the Cratchits were more of a mixed marriage: Bob is cockney and she's not. Let’s say she sounds more Northern Irish.”
Otherwise, this rendition hones closely to the original book—and to the version Dickens took on a celebrated reading tour through the United States in the 1860s.
For those who have seen any of the dozens of TV and movie adaptations of A Christmas Carol—whether that’s with Alistair Sim, Bill Murray, or The Muppets—it’s fun to return to the original material, Talwar says.
“Movies can't do everything that’s in a book,” he explains. “I mean, everyone knows the story, but there are little details that will be new and surprising.”
He’s struck, time and again, by the rhythms of Dickens’s language and the way it flows. It turns out the author was as food-obsessed as most of us are during the holiday season: one passage that’s a true mouthful is the elaborate description of the Ghost of Christmas Present’s Yuletide-dish-bedecked throne.
“It’s one of the longer lists I’ve had to learn in any play, regardless of what's going on around it,” Talwar says. “Oh boy, he describes almost every food you can imagine that feels Christmassy–you’re overstuffed on the list of food that the Ghost of Christmas Present is sitting on.” (The mountain of delectables includes “mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges” and “luscious pears”.) And yes, Talwar plays that ghost too.
Still, amid all the iconic characters he brings to life in the course of A Christmas Carol, Talwar believes the enduring power of the story comes back to one person.
“Why does this story work in such a timeless fashion when others come and go?” he says. “I think it's the creation of this character of Scrooge: someone who has their eyes opened in different ways or has their hope restored or their faith renewed. It really does give you a map about why he is the way he is. He’s a bit of a monster, a bit of a tyrant, and you go,’This is probably why.’
“He’s a human being with all kinds of choices available to him and then, at the end of the day, he takes a leap of faith and says, ‘I’ll try.’” And there, Talwar may have hit upon the best way to describe what it is that he does when he embarks on this adventure each evening on stage: a leap of faith.
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