‘A Christmas Carol’ star Michael Cerveris calls Alastair Sim and Michael Caine his favorite Scrooges
When it comes to A Christmas Carol adaptations, there's no One Scrooge to rule them all. But if you're looking to populate the Mount Rushmore of actors who have played the part of Charles Dickens' "Bah, humbug!" spouting grinch, there are a few go-to faces — starting with Alastair Sim and Michael Caine, the respective leads of 1951's A Christmas Carol and 1992's The Muppet Christmas Carol. Those are the two Christmas-hating North Stars that current Scrooge, Michael Cerveris, follows.
"That's the one I watch every year," the Tony-winning actor tells Gold Derby about Sim's famed black-and-white Carol, which he notes has served as the "template" for all successive film versions. "That and, of course, The Muppet Christmas Carol because what could be better?"
"What I love about Alastair Sim is his ability to be absolutely terrifying and miserable, but still darkly comical," he adds. "And then just willing to go bonkers when given the chance!"
Those are all notes that Cerveris successfully hits in his own star turn as Scrooge in a Muppet-free production that's currently playing in New York through the holiday season at PAC NYC's Perelman Performing Arts Center. Imported from the Old Vic in London — where it initially premiered in 2017 and has since become an annual event — this Christmas Carol was adapted for the stage by Jack Thorne, the Emmy-winning writer of Netflix's blockbuster limited series Adolescence, and directed by Matthew Warchus, who won a Tony for the 2009 Broadway staging of God of Carnage with the late James Gandolfini.
"I was literally welling up as I was reading Jack's remarkable adaptation," Cerveris says. "What this adaptation really tries to do is make Scrooge a person that we know and can hopefully recognize a little bit of in ourself — and then learn, as he does, how to make better choices."
Thorne's version originally played on Broadway in 2019 with Campbell Scott as Scrooge, and that staging earned five Tony Awards, including Best Original Score and Best Scenic Design in a Play. This production marks its first New York appearance in five years and Thorne and Warchus took advantage of the new location to make the experience even more immersive, staging it "in the round" so that Scrooge's story plays out from all corners of the theater, literally surrounding the audience in A Christmas Carol.
"There's not a bad seat in the house in my opinion," says Tony nominee Crystal Lucas-Perry, who plays the Ghost of Christmas Present. "Jack is doing what he does best: making sure that everyone has an experience in that space. We get to enter and exit from different places, and that brings new exploration and new depths of character. We're not just on the stage — we're in the house and in the balconies with you. You're part of the magic."
Gold Derby can confirm that sentiment. At a recent performance, we saw audiences' faces light up with delight during the extended climax, when Scrooge's conversion from Christmas hater to Christmas lover is accompanied by applause-worthy moments of stagecraft, like when sackfuls of fresh fruits and veggies are emptied from the rafters and roll down to the stage below on long sheaths of fabric doublings as slides or when an entire Christmas turkey slides by on a wire, a small sparkler protruding from its cavity. And there are two points in the show when the theater is filled with gently falling snow as time seems to temporarily stand still.
"When it snows, I cry every night — and I'm old and mean!" Tony nominee Nancy Opel, who plays the Ghost of Christmas Past, says with a hearty laugh. "The reason this production is so enjoyable for everyone is that it's timeless. It's just a wonderful story, and it is so uplifting at the end. I think people will dance out of the theater."
In a neat bit of timing, Cerveris is starring Scrooge exactly 20 years after playing a very different kind of villain in an acclaimed 2005 production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The actor received a Tony nomination for swinging his razor wide opposite Patti LuPone's Mrs. Lovett in a staging that memorably had the actors serving double duty as the ensemble and the orchestra. While A Christmas Carol may not have any suspicious meat pies, Cerveris does see a connection between the two productions across the two decades.
"The way that company became the orchestra is one of my most cherished working experiences," the actor remarks of his Sweeney Todd run. "In a lot of ways, this Christmas Carol reminds me of that aesthetic; the idea of working together and playing together. I'm grateful we didn't have the intrusion of a camera in our Sweeney Todd rehearsal room, but learning that show and putting it together are among my favorite memories. And the original Broadway production with Len Cariou was the first Broadway show I ever saw, so to be able to perform the role for my mom and dad — who took me to that production — was pretty awesome."
Besides his multiple Tony nominations, Cerveris also has a SAG nod as part of the ensemble for the hit HBO period drama, The Gilded Age. The actor appeared in the first two seasons as Watson, the personal valet to Morgan Spector's railway tycoon, George Russell, who turned out to have a complicated (and tragic) backstory. While Cerveris wasn't invited back for Season 3, he's hoping Gilded Age creator Julian Fellowes might take a page out of his Downton Abbey playbook for the show's fourth year.
"I'm comforted by the fact that on Downton, people disappeared and then just showed up again out of nowhere," the actor says with a smile. "They've got my number. I had a great experience on that show and I do think there's a lot more to Watson's story. For us New York theater actors, it's kind of an upper-class Law & Order!"
