Past Scrooges take on Marley

They're a couple of ex-Scrooges.

So it wasn't exactly unfamiliar territory when Blue Barn Theatre co-founders Kevin Lawler and Nils Haaland agreed to work together on “Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol.”

Lawler is directing Haaland, who plays Marley in the dramedy that opens at the Blue Barn Friday night.

Haaland toured for three years as Scrooge in the Nebraska Theatre Caravan's “A Christmas Carol,” playing in both the East Coast and Midwestern touring companies in different years. Lawler logged one year on tour as Scrooge with the Caravan, the professional touring arm of the Omaha Community Playhouse.

“Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol,” written by Tom Mula, finds Marley new to the afterlife, discovering the weight of the chains he forged through a lifetime of greed and selfishness. His only chance to free himself is to get his old partner Scrooge to have a complete change of heart, of his own free will.

Tall order.

Lawler said Marley is not quite as vicious in this show as he is in “A Christmas Carol,” nor as mean as Scrooge.

“Scrooge is almost 100 percent mean. Marley is only 98 percent. There's that little window that allows him the journey he takes in this play,” Lawler said.

Mula's show is not as sentimental as the Playhouse's take on the Dickens classic, Lawler said, but it's funnier and darker than the typical stage production of “A Christmas Carol.” And its adult humor, though not R-rated, appeals less to young children.

As a director, Lawler said he saw two steep hills to climb with the show. One is that Scrooge and Marley are icons.

“It's important for the actors to realize that Scrooge could exist today, and does,” Lawler said. “We've been hearing a lot about him down on Wall Street the last year and a half. They must be played as real people, with real desires and fears. The characters are true to life, not caricatures.”

The other challenge: Unlike the Playhouse's fully realized Victorian world, “Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol” uses audience imagination to create that world. There's almost no scenery, few props, no costume changes, and only four actors play all the parts. Yet the characters fly through the stars, sit atop cathedrals looking down at London, visit the past in a snow-filled wood and experience supernatural events.

“How do you make that come alive, with the actors' bodies and the words they use?” Lawler asked. “That's the great strength of this play and fun for the audience. The visceral thrills come from working with audience imagination to create them.”

Lighting designer Bill Van Deest will help nudge that imagination, along with an original score written for the piece.

Lawler had been looking at the script for years, hoping to play Marley. But he readily signed on when asked to direct his longtime friend.

“Thank goodness for Kevin,” Haaland said. “The trap with this script is drifting toward parody. Having played Scrooge that many times, I learned you have to really honor the story itself.”

A challenge for Haaland is the way Mula chose to tell the story. Characters supply their own narration. So, while Haaland tells the audience Marley is terrified walking down a dark corridor, he must simultaneously act it out in character “so it inspires the audience to see and feel what he might be going through in that moment. It's a multi-layered, very challenging form of storytelling. It's been a real trip.”

Lawler said he heavily researched Dickens' “A Christmas Carol” when he played Scrooge, and Mula's script reflects his past with the story as well.

“It's very true to ‘A Christmas Carol,' ” Lawler said. “There's a lot of detail and history for Scrooge and Marley that lives in the script. So, knowing that history has really paid off. I think it has for Nils, too.”

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