Gary Chappel is wishing for a lump of coal this Christmas. He intends to be very, very bad.
Specifically, the actor intends his character to be very, very bad and it's a portrayal that already comes from a nasty place. Chappel is playing the miserly curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge, the infamous Christmas jerk imagined up onto the pages of Charles Dickens.
As if Dickens didn't build his most famous character sinister enough, Chappel thinks he can look inside himself to draw out his own personal dark spots to lend to his performance of Scrooge.
"It's emotionally draining, but I'm OK with that. It's part of the process of being a good actor," said Chappel.
It's the second time he's been visited by this ghost of Dickensian literature. When Judy Russell's Enchainment Dance Centre company first performed the classic Christmas fable in 2012, he played the lead then, too. Familiarity breeds contempt, goes the old adage, and for Chappel that's a good thing. It means having the luxury of knowing the material so well from before that he can concentrate on being especially atrocious.
"I'm very excited about playing this crazy, wretched guy," Chappel said. "One thing I want to add to the role is more cynicism and go emotionally deeper with all the horrible things that have happened to him over his life, so you see that journey from a dark place to a place of light near the end."
Under Dickens's expert pen, Scrooge was a complex character from the start. Dickens wrote him not as just a flat representation of the overbearing power-class of Victorian England, but as a product of it himself. The readers and live audiences get to see the ways his heart grew progressively colder as the icy social winds of that era numbed him to joy, charity, even common decency.
But Dickens also provided paths to redemption for Scrooge, and stoked the fires of hope for the audience. Chappel said his pursuit of Scrooge's darkness was only to bask even more brightly in that light that everyone knows is waiting at the end of A Christmas Carol.
"This play is about looking honestly and deeply at your inner demons and finding hope, joy and ultimately redemption, filling one's life with love, charity and happiness," he said.
He probably needs to keep his mind fixated on the positive outcomes, because it's his third acting performance in a row that ventures into the shadowlands of humanity. Bookended by these turns as Scrooge was playing the part of Thenardier, the inn keeper in Les Miserables.
Over the years Chappel has frequently bounced between villainous roles and comedic performances (not counting a moment of sudden Christmas Carol levity in 2012 when he had to ad lib after a costume malfunction involving his trousers). He was well regarded for his romantic comedy skills as one of the leads in Excalibur Theatre Arts production of Brigadoon 15 years ago. A few years later he gave children a pleasant fear-thrill as the Goblin General in PG Theatre Workshop's production of The Hobbit. His experience on the boards dates back to the late Josie Smith's Wonderland Players as a youth (he graduated from Duchess Park secondary school in the '80s).
He is on the young side for a role that is often depicted as a senior citizen, so getting into Scrooge requires a lot of makeup, costume help and physical commitment.
"I've had a lot of stage training in my life so I just utilize what I've learned," he said. "Connecting to the character always starts with the body, when I do a role. I start by playing around with how he sits, how he walks, how he moves, and then I use that to help me get into his mindset. Once that happens, you move on to the five Ws - who, what, when, where, why - and digging in as deeply as you can about how he is as a person."
In addition to having enough familiarity with those traits from the 2012 version of the show to already know a lot of those things, he also knows the lines already, so that adds yet another level of quality to his rendition of Scrooge in 2014.
"If you do a play once or 1,000 times, if you have a small role or a large one, you have to have those lines so down that it almost becomes wiped from your slate," he said. "Ideally, the lines should be so ingrained that you stop thinking about the words and that allows you to focus on other things. Active listening on stage is very important for creating relationship. If you are properly taking in what the other characters are saying and conveying with body language, it allows you to respond more authentically. And it keeps you awake on stage - in the moment."
Scrooge's moments come on Dec. 12 through Dec. 21 when A Christmas Carol is performed at the PG Playhouse. Evening showtimes are 7 p.m. and matinees (Dec. 14 and 20 only) are 2 p.m. Tickets are on sale now at Studio 2880.
