Excerpt from Cincinnati.com
For many of us, the holidays wouldn’t be the same without Bruce Cromer. Since 2005, he’s been the actor playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the Playhouse in the Park’s production of “A Christmas Carol.”
But this is 2020. And along with all the other weirdness we have lived through, the Playhouse’s holiday show has undergone as many plot twists as one of Dickens’ deliciously convoluted novels.
By late spring, “A Christmas Carol” looked like a goner. How could the Playhouse safely bring together 28 cast members, stage technicians, ushers and box office personnel with an auditorium packed with 626 patrons?
In mid-July, artistic director Blake Robison offered a solution. “A Christmas Carol” would be back. But it would look very different. Audiences would be limited to 190. And instead of 28 actors, there would be just one. And that person would not be Cromer. Three months later, things changed again. The show was canceled, along with the rest of the Playhouse’s 2020-2021 mainstage season.
But again, it’s 2020. Expect the unexpected. So a couple of weeks ago, the Playhouse announced that it had cut a deal with WVXU and WMUB to broadcast and stream a one-person version of “A Christmas Carol.” The star? The inestimable Mr. Cromer.
“I’m so happy about this,” said Cromer, speaking by phone while walking his dog in Yellow Springs, where he lives. “It’s such beautiful writing.”
Interestingly, even though Cromer is the quintessential man of the stage, he admits to a passion for radio plays.
“They give your imagination such a workout,” he said. “And I think Dickens is especially great for radio. Some people think he’s overwritten. But he is so descriptive that most of the time, all you really have to do is read him clearly and it’s all there.”
