LOS ANGELES — Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” has been captivating our imaginations since it was first published in 1843.
The story leaps off the page, so it’s no wonder that it’s inspired countless stage and film adaptation, including cartoons, musicals, even Muppets.
But for Tim Farmer, there is one quintessential Scrooge.
“The closest memory I have is probably 1958,” he recalled. “I was eight years old, and I saw the Alastair Sim’s movie where he played Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s my favorite. To this day. And somehow, some way I knew even at eight years old, I’d get to do this someday.”
Farmer has actually shivered in Scrooges nightshirt in several productions, but for the last few years you’ll find him shouting Humbug in Hollywood, not in a theatre per se but at the historic First Presbyterian Church.
It’s a fitting setting, he says.
“Theater was first done in church to tell stories to talk about the Bible,” he said, dressed in his full Ebenezer ensemble. “It’s an opportunity to kind of come back home in this beautiful old sanctuary.”
He’s been coming to mass at this church for years, but whether he’s in the pews or on the stage built at the altar, he marvels at its majesty.
“How can you not appreciate the craftsmanship?” he said, pointing out the fine details of the 100-year-old structure. “This was done with love. This was done with prayer. There are very few places like this.”
Susan Kanim agrees.
“The colors of the stained glass, they just lighten your… life up with energy and light,” she said.
Kanim has been coming to this church since she was a child. Her parents were married in this smaller sanctuary. She had her wedding in the same room.
“It’s exactly the same as it was, I think my mom said, when she got married,” Kanim said.
The church itself goes back to 1903 and the cornerstone of the gothic sanctuary was laid in 1923. This was before the Hollywood Freeway that actually runs around it.
“A wonderful woman, Henrietta Mears, heard that there was going to be a freeway that was going to go straight through the property of the church and she fought City Hall and won,” Kanim explained. “And so now the freeway has a big curve, and that’s to preserve this property.”
As the church archivist, Kanim knows the history well — the origins of the stain glass windows that tell the story of the Reformation. The details of the wooden buttresses and the painted cloth covered ceiling. These things were always here and so, she says, was theatre.
“From the very first time that the doors were open for the dedication, there was a theater in the sanctuary,” she said. “The pastors wrote the different plays that were done in this sanctuary.”
The church has done “A Christmas Carol” as far back as the 1940s, but they didn’t start doing it annually until 1969.
“I was in the first production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ as Belle,” Kanim said. “Our version back then was a musical.”
She continued in the role for many years, into the 1980s.
There have been many Belles since, but Kanim still watches in wonder at the effect the show has on the audience.
“It has such a wonderful story,” she mused. “It brings people who would not normally come to a church to walk it through the doors… It is exciting to feel what they’re feeling. You actually live it for the first time each time you see someone come in and watch the play.”
This is the 55th anniversary of the annual event, and director Jesse Corti has been at the helm for the past few years. The version they do now is adapted by his wife Julietta, that he said is very true the original story.
“One of the things that we see in other plays and other versions of this is that they don’t get everything that Dickens wanted,” he said. “We include those in this production, and it’s a very redemptive show.”
Including, he said, scriptural and religious references. This Scrooge is truly a man who finds redemption.
“You always want a redemption,” Corti said of the story’s powerful ending. “You always want somebody to come back and to change his life.”
It’s a moment, Kanim said, that everyone in the sanctuary — regardless of religion — can relate to.
“You see that just by changing your heart… your life can change,” she said. “You can actually see a new version and a happier version, and you don’t have to take in the negative of people, but you can actually always feel it with joy.”
He may start out all Bah Humbug, but it’s the joy Scrooge finally finds that makes playing him such a joy for Farmer.
“And that’s why I love Alistair Sim’s version,” he explained. “Because he inhabited that.”
He is honored to be a part of a long line of Scrooges at First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood. He still loves the role that bowled him over at the age of eight and has no intention of hanging up his top hat any time soon.
“There’s only one person who knows,” he said, pointing up to the gothic ceiling and beyond. “I’ll do it as long as He lets me, as long as He wants me to. And if I can do it another ten years, I’ll be the most blessed man.”