Adaptation of Dickens’ Masterpiece by Rosen
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre is celebrating the world premiere of a brand new adaptation of A Christmas Carol and the tour de force of a national award-winning cast member. This year, the Rep is staging an original production of the Christmas classic, written by the theatre’s artistic director, Eric Rosen.
Reprising the role of Belle for the sixth time is the gifted, artistically ambidextrous Vanessa Severo, one of only six winners nationally of a prestigious William and Eva Fox Foundation fellowship.
The Rep’s annual 37-year-old holiday presentation of Dickens’s enduring classic has never been dull, but Rosen’s adaptation with more of Charles Dickens’s own dialogue takes an even more exuberant approach. There’s added dance and merrymaking hijinks. Tracy Terstreip, a choreographer and movement coach and veteran Broadway performer was called on to create the dance routines. Rosen’s authentically refigured production is “a bit more complicated, more dense,” says Severo who’s bringing to life a more determined, assertive Belle, a role rewritten “to the fullest juice of Dickens’s 174-year-old novella.
“Eric gave Belle a strong voice,” Severo says. “Belle in the past was sad, mournful, heartbroken, weak; but this year, she makes her decision, takes a bold step, and she’s resolute with it.”
This is Severo’s ninth KC Rep production of A Christmas Carol.
“I feel like I’ve aged with Belle,” she says.
Besides playing the fiancée of a callow, young Scrooge, Severo also returns to the role of Mrs. Fred, the pretty wife of Scrooge’s nephew.
“One day, I would love to play the Ghost of Christmas Past, to really explore the role and see what kind of movement the spirit would have,” Severo says.
A Christmas Carol tells the hair-raising tale of otherworldly intervention in the late-stage redemption and transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, a grasping, mean-spirited miser. Set in early Victorian London, England, the story follows Scrooge on Christmas Eve. He’s frightened on an illuminating journey with three spirits. With the first spirit, Scrooge revisits his past. With the second and third spirits, respectively, he takes an uncomfortably critical look at his present and future.
The message of Dickens’s fable: “It is never too late to change,” Severo says. “I feel that as we move forward with technology, the theatre happens to be the only experience where we see ourselves humanized and learn about our mistakes and what we can do about them.”
She speaks with authority. Severo has acted, danced and directed at a number of theatres. She wrote and performed the critically acclaimed one-woman play, Frida: A Self Portrait about the late Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo.
Now, having been selected from among thousands of artists nationally for a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship for Exceptional Merit, the versatile artist is tackling a new project. She’s working on developing a master class on auditions and monologues for actors with disabilities and actors of color.
She’s also reworking Frida and traveled to Mexico to visit the painter’s home. The revised play is longer, covering Kahlo’s life from age six to 46 with lots of movement. Her desire to add “intense” movement took Severo to Canada where she studied with Tadashi Suzuki, a world-renowned Japanese stage director whose method focuses on the body, especially the feet.
The meaty additions have extended Frida’s runtime from 45 minutes to about an hour.
“There are still some things to fine-tune, but I’m about 90 percent satisfied,” Severo says.
It was the play, along with her idea for the master class that won her the fellowship on her first try; many talented artists apply many times without success. She’d like to debut the revised Frida at the Rep; if that doesn’t happen, she’ll shop it around.
“It’s hot right now so I want to strike when the iron’s hot,” she says.
A Christmas Carol runs through Dec. 24 at Spencer Theatre on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus. For tickets and information: kcrep.org or 816-235-2700.
