Patrick Stewart and A Christmas Carol

Patrick Stewart is reprising two of his most famous and perhaps best roles. One is of course Jean-Luc Picard, in the new Star Trek series premiering next year, which remains a touchstone for so many people my age. Or at least among the people I spend time with. 

The other project that he’s reprising is A Christmas Carol, which he performed as a one man show in New York, Los Angeles and London – and is reprising this week in two performances, the last of which is tonight, as a fundraiser for City Harvest and Ars Nova.

Sadly I couldn’t afford the 500 price tag.

I’m not just saying that as a passive aggressive way of complaining about the price tag. (Although I am). I really am sad. Without hyperbole, Stewart’s one man A Christmas Carol was one of the single greatest, most important experiences of my life.

First, some context.

I saw the show in year. I knew Stewart because of Star Trek and I had gotten into the habit of reading the New York Times, to which my parents in Connecticut had a weekend subscription. Which meant that every Saturday I read the Arts and Leisure section. That section was a window into another world. This is a time when the internet was at its infancy. This is before people could go to movie theaters around the world to watch opera at the Met or plays at the National Theatre. And I was young, so this became my window onto a larger world. This is where I read about filmmakers and artists and playwrights and actors that I never existed. This is where I became aware of a larger artistic and cultural landscape. It would be years before I understood the limits of this particular window, a fact that might be easy for some to mock, but I learned so much from those pages.

I read about A Christmas Carol, and I wanted to see it. Why? I can’t quite say. My experience of theater before this point had primarily been school plays, which I mostly loathed, and a few school trips, which I found deeply uninteresting. 

I still remember the theater, and sitting in the next to the last row. And how the row behind had less leg room, as though they were crammed in, and I found myself wondering if the tickets were cheaper. I’ve sat in the last row in other theaters at other shows, and it’s not horrible. Though I’m fairly certain I complained at the time.

Stewart walked out onto a stage empty except for a table and two chairs. (I could be wrong about the number of chairs – it’s been more than a few years). What I remember so distinctly is being spellbound for those two hours.

It may make me sound so naive and inexperienced but at the time I had never seen a one person play. Never seen performance art. Never read a play for one person. Never read or seen that many plays of any kind really.

And if it was simply a play that he was in or a reading of the book, I’m sure that it would have been an amazing experience. 

But what he did for those two hours was to embody that book, to act out every character, to capture the tone and meaning of the text. I had never seen an actor do what he did that night. I had never seen anything where someone was able to do what he did. 

I left that theater with a new appreciation of Stewart as an actor. Because while I previously loved him on one show, I now saw what he was capable of doing. How he could command a stage. It’s one reason why I have been lukewarm about some of the roles he’s had over the years (X-Men, I’m looking at you) because he’s good, but those roles never offered him the ability to do what he can do.

It’s why, despite the fact that he is very good, I will always think of him first and foremost as a theater actor. 

He will always be Picard, but I’ve seen Stewart in a number of other projects over the years. My favorite would have to be when he played Prospero in George C. Wolfe’s production of The Tempest in New York. Stewart did a different version of the play in the UK years later, but I remember just how he commanded the stage. There’s a way where it’s easy to see why producers who saw him thought he could be a captain, how he could be the center of the show, could be in command.

I remain fairly obsessed by The Tempest, admittedly, since before I saw the play, but that version comes to mind. I remember Carrie Preston as Miranda, but I will never forget the amazing Aunjanue Ellis as Ariel, in part because like Stewart, she commanded the stage and took control, though in a very different way.

I missed Stewart doing Godot with Ian McKellan. I couldn’t afford those tickets, either.

But his A Christmas Carol changed everything for me. Because it wasn’t simply that my opinion of Stewart was transformed and my eyes were opened to what he’s able to do. My eyes were open as to what theater could do and what art could be. It helped me to understand what I wanted to do. What I wanted to create. And it opened my mind up to what was possible.

It is the kind of gift that can never be paid back, but in the nature of art, it can only be paid forward.

So I’m sorry that I won’t get the chance to see the play again. And even more sorry that more people won’t get the chance to see it this time around.

It is interesting that right now Stewart is returning to two roles that are so very different, one who has a very dark and pessimistic view of people and the other who is much moire hopeful. More than one person has commented that the recent Star Trek films and shows have gone into the past because we’re at a moment where the present is so bleak than we simply cannot imagine a more hopeful future. And of course so many are reminded today of the excesses and cruelties of the Victorian era when considering what is happening today. It remains to be seen how he will find a way to reflect all of that in these two projects in this moment.

79 years old and unwilling to rest of his laurels, looking for something new and something exciting and something challenging. That in itself is an inspiration. Even today, Stewart’s remains a model and an inspiration.