BETHEL - As the lights fade and cathedral bells begin chiming so loudly you can feel their vibration in your toes, a powdery light snow drifts across the Walnut Hill Community Church stage - and a tiny boy in ragamuffin attire comes hobbling into view supported by a single crudely fashioned crutch.NewArts Director Michael Unger trails off in the mostly empty confines of the auditorium. And the cast of A Christmas Carol resets for the first time in what will inevitably be a countless series of stops and starts as technical rehearsals commence ahead of the holiday favorite's local debut.A Christmas Carol along with NewArts, which up to this past summer has staged ambitious musicals either at Newtown High School, or during the school theater's ongoing renovation, at the Walnut Hill theater in the Stony Hill neighborhood of Bethel.Spamalot, so the show boasts quite an esteemed pedigree.A Christmas Carol arrives under Mr Unger's purview after a 16-year run at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., where it was hailed as a perennial "must see." Although the configuration of the theater and its loading dock in Bethel prevented a couple of the original production's set pieces from making it into the 2016 version of the show, Mr Unger said little will be lost to local audiences as most of the highly detailed and stylized sets were able to be modified for the different specifications of Walnut Hill's backstage.A Christmas Carol under director Tom Huber, the partnership between NewArts and the church has drawn a number of perennial performers who have coming back to this production of the beloved Dickens tale, Mr Unger said.newartssm@gmail.comIf interested, contact Mr Unger via e-mail at click here.

Within moments the stage is flooded with crowds of Victorian-garbed Londoners... carolers erupt... dancers twirl. Suddenly a tall, gaunt man in a gray top hat bursts into the scene, tossing a small pine tree at center stage to the ground, where it unceremoniously breaks in half.

As he begins shouting lines, it becomes immediately clear that the microphone is turned off.

"OK, let's run that again. Somebody check Jimmy's mic, please... and fix that tree."

The voice of

NewArts' production - the Tommy Thompson version of Charles Dickens' Christmas classic - opens December 9 and runs through the December 22 at the Bethel venue. The Walnut Hill Church is co-producing

While the production features Broadway actor James Ludwig playing Scrooge along with a cast of nearly 100 other local and regional talents, they share the stage with costumes and sets created by Tony Award-winning designers Jess Goldstein and Ming Cho Lee. Tony winner Michael Starobin is also represented, having created the production's original score, and Mr Ludwig was among the Tony-winning original cast of Mike Nichols'

The local debut of

"At the McCarter, the theater had 30 professional technicians installing the show in a day-and-a-half. Here, it's a bunch of dads and moms with me putting this together over the course of a few months," Mr Unger said. "We're working together figuring out how to rebuild this massive set. As a matter of fact, only two-thirds of the McCarter sets even fit through the door."

So while he's got all the acting bases covered and then some, Mr Unger has been woefully short on backstage and production assistance. But he admits it's been fun and inspiring working with his core backstage volunteers, most of whom put in a full day of work, and then turn out on nights and weekends - sometimes toiling toward midnight - readying the massive production.

The plucky director said although his annual McCarter casts were populated with professional actors, he is also enjoying discovering all the new and more raw talents among the NewArts troupe.

"Working with community actors is obviously very different," Mr Unger said during the company's first night of technical run-throughs November 29. "At the McCarter, we were blessed to have access to some of the best regional actors in the country. So coming into a community where you're discovering talent like we have here, you're finding little gems. There's a guy in this cast who was on Broadway with Dustin Hoffman, and we have another actress who has done multiple roles in regional operettas. Then there are some other folks who haven't had any professional theater backgrounds, and they have a fantastic way with the language of the show - they are super skilled, and they deliver the comedy."

For the most part, however, prepping local actors is more about getting them to, well, not act.

"The approach with them is quite different, because they don't come with the tools and experience that professional actors have," Mr Unger said. "So you have to help them interpret their roles without acting. You actually have to work at getting them to stop acting. But I hired them to play themselves - albeit with a British accent. We've also groomed a lot of the younger kids who have been in one or more of our summer musicals, some for four years straight."

And since the Walnut Hill Church had previously staged

A Christmas Carol, so we're inheriting a lot of that legacy," he said. "Tim Huber, who has also played Scrooge on this stage up to now, works well with the actors from past productions, who I am inheriting for this production."

"There are a number of really dedicated families who have grown up here working on

The overall cast of 105 includes 25 caroling chorus members who sing before the show and during intermission, as well as appearing on stage in key scenes. Fifteen children's roles are double cast among 30 of the youngest actors, and the rest of the 65 members are in all eight productions.

"By comparison, I had 36 in the McCarter cast. So in any given show, I'm working with 90 people on stage during each production," Mr Unger said.

He said there is little need to tweak any of the elements or effects employed in the NewArts production, because Mr Unger had regularly added enhancements during his 16 years running the show in New Jersey.

"I think we're at a good place right now," he said. "I don't think anything will feel compromised; the audience experience here will be quite similar to the McCarter production."

NewArts organizers are also heartened, Mr Unger said, by several huge bursts of ticket sales.

"I really want this to be a show for the Newtown community - not just NewArts people, not just Walnut Hill people. It's one of the best stories ever written, and we're bringing you a Broadway-level production," Mr Unger said. "We've inherited this magnificent set from the McCarter, and we're bringing those professional elements to this community setting. This won't look like community theater, and kids' tickets are less than the price of a movie."

As the show draws closer to opening, Mr Unger is putting a call out to any others in the area who may be interested in committing to work in the production crew.

"Both experienced and inexperienced volunteers are welcome, from high school age on up," he added, "and they will be mentored by Broadway-caliber professionals."

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