AMERICAN THEATER | The ghosts of the future have passed

No ghost disturbs his sleep to show him the error of his ways, but Eddie, a successful regional theater actor who appears in various roles in A Christmas Carol over successive years, travels through time and, in fact, receives messages from his past. When we meet this Juilliard-trained actor in the first scene of Anna Ouyang Moench’s bittersweet new behind-the-scenes comedy, Your local theater presents: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, once again (has La Jolla Playhouse from November 19 to December. 15), Eddie is floundering after college and looking for encouragement, which he gets in the form of a green room pep talk about sacrifice and stage glory from production veteran Scrooge, a beloved veteran named Oliver.

By the end of the play, four scenes and three decades later, Oliver has been embittered and replaced, and it is Eddie, now the Scrooge of the series, who struggles to avoid the same fate and to convey inspiration, not no more “bah humbug”, to the next generation.

The way casting works in the play, Moench explained, is that all the actors alternate between roles of different ages, except for the one who plays Eddie. “So he keeps talking to actors who are wearing his old costumes, and in one way he’s talking to them, but in another way he’s talking to himself,” she said.

Writing plays could be a way for Moench to talk to himself. “There was a period when I was so exhausted by theater that it was difficult to find pleasure in it,” she admitted. Now that she has written a play about “the trajectory of a career in theater” – a potentially terrifying prospect – she said: “I find myself so happy to be able to do this. »

It’s also possible that a bit of Dickens rubbed off on her. As director Les Waters pointed out, when it’s done well, A Christmas Carol is a story of transformation.

Rob Weinert-Kendt (he/him) is the editor-in-chief of American Theater.