“A Christmas Carol” runs Nov. 29-Dec. 29 at the Alliance Theatre.
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By the time Chris Kayser blusters his final “bah, humbug” this season, he’ll have spent 20 consecutive Decembers in the Alliance Theatre’s A Christmas Carol — 16 as Ebenezer Scrooge, two as Bob Cratchit and two as Jacob Marley.
This, alas, is his finale, and not for any scandalous reasons.
“It’s a great job,” he says of playing Dickens’ antihero. “You have the full weight of the Alliance Theatre behind you and the words of one of the great writers of our language. I’ve never been sick of it or dreaded it, but I wanted to make sure I stopped while I was still enjoying it.”
The idea of walking away is relatively new.
“Last year was the first time it ever occurred to me ‘How much longer can I keep doing this?’ And right away it occurred to me that I didn’t want to stop because I had a bad year. I wanted to have one more good year and stop it on a high note.”
Kayser, 64, began playing ol’ Ebenezer when he was in his 40s, and says “I kind of aged into the role. I started probably too young to play Scrooge, which is probably witnessed by the fact I don’t have to wear makeup anymore.”
No matter his self-effacing humility. His numbers are staggering, especially when you remember that Scrooge leaves the stage just twice during the show’s 2.5 hours and only for brief crossovers backstage so he can make another entrance. Those numbers:
- 40 performances per season (counting previews but not rehearsals)
- 800 total performances, equal to a Broadway run of almost two years
- 1,600 hours spent in Scrooge’s nightcap/top hat (almost 67 days of his life)
- And seven additional years in the Academy Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, as Cratchit, Mr. Fezziwig, Old Joe and his own creation, Lorenzo the Legless Musician.
To see Kayser onstage — every one of those 40 performances fresh, sprightly, curmudgeonly — you’d never guess he had such greybeard status. But like athletes everywhere, her wants to go out at the top of his game.
The sports reference is apt. The Christmas Carol grind requires herculean stamina and good health (the latter rarely possible because some bug or another always finds one cast member and spreads from actor to actor like an unchecked storm of holiday cheer).
Kayser, a tennis pro at one time, does what he can. He’s at the gym five days a week year-round taking boot camp classes that alternate between body sculpting and old-school weightlifting. He might also swim or take a turn on an elliptical machine. On weekends he plays tennis.
And his resume shows he’s just as popular at other metro theaters. He’s been an artistic associate at Georgia Shakespeare for 24 seasons, most recently playing Claudius in the fall production of Hamlet. He was nominated for a 2013 Suzi Bass Award (Atlanta’s professional theater honors) for his featured work in Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still at Horizon Theatre. And he regularly works with Atlanta’s French-language Théâtre du Rêve.
He’ll soon travel to France (the Normandy Coast and Paris) to do a one-person show titled The Animal of Time, about a man walking through a cemetery and reading the tombstones.
“It’s very cool, but it’s a devil to memorize,” says Kayser, who has a bachelor’s degree in French but never took an acting class. In April he’s in Camelot at Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Roswell, as Merlyn and Pellinore. Summer will likely find him back at Georgia Shakespeare.
And next Christmas? He’ll likely be acting, perhaps even in A Christmas Carol. But not as Ebenezer Scrooge.
“I want to make clear I am not retiring from the theater, or even A Christmas Carol,” he says. “Just Scrooge.”
To that we say a grateful, and greedy, “bah, humbug!”
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Kathy Janich, Encore Atlanta’s managing editor, has been seeing, working in or covering the performing arts for most of her life. Please email: [email protected].
