Four Performances Only, This Weekend—

Town Players To Close 70th Season

With Holiday Words & Music

Town Players of Newtown will invite their audience into a Victorian parlor for readings from the wonderful holiday stories of Charles Dickens, complete with music of the season, with the final show of their 70th anniversary season, Tiny Tim, Pickwick and All: Dickens in December.

Dickens describes the holidays as “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” His holiday writings embody this “Carol Philosophy” and have helped to shape our modern concept of the soul of the season.

The Town Players performance will include excerpts from A Christmas Carol, The Pickwick Papers, Sketches by Boz and The Chimes.

Dickens himself enjoyed reading in performance, and he wrote at a time when many families spent the evening hours reading aloud, or being read to, from the Bible, newspapers, and current works of fiction. Ruth Anne Baumgartner, director of this production, comments, “When you hear a Dickens story read out loud, you realize that he wrote as much for the ear as for the mind’s eye. The time and characters spring into vivid life through the images and rhythms the words create.”

Seven of Connecticut’s finest actors (Elise Bochinski of Weston, Leslie Van Etten Broatch of Milford, Aaron Kaplan of Bethel, Damien Langan of Bridgeport, Pamela Meister of Newtown, Ashley Nichols of Woodbury, and Rob Pawlikowski of Roxbury) and two members of the wonderful early-music ensemble The Everyman Guild (Doug Miller of Sandy Hook and Matilda Giampietro of Washington) will be such a Victorian family in the Town Players’ staged reading, performing the stories and traditional songs.

The audience will be invited to sing along when they can, and also to experience the pleasure all children know — being read to.

Pamela Meister is producer of Dickens in December; Kevin McElroy of Waterbury will run lights and sound.

The script was developed by Ms Baumgartner, with the assistance of the cast; Doug Miller selected the musical pieces. The set was adapted by Alexander Kulcsar.

Damien Langan appears in this production courtesy of Actors Equity Association.

Proceeds from the show will be put toward improving handicapped access to the theater.

Tiny Tim, Pickwick and All: Dickens in December will be at The Little Theater, on Orchard Hill Road in Newtown, for four performances only: evening performances Friday and Saturday, December 9 and 10, at 8 pm; matinees Saturday and Sunday, December 10 and 11, at 2 pm.

Ticket donations are $10 for adults and $5 for children. The event may not be appropriate for very young children.

Call 270-9144 for directions and reservations.