Scrooge's encore

RALEIGH -- Jerry Lewis is revered in France, but Raleigh's Theatre in the Park veterans learned while performing in Compiègne, France, 20 years ago that the legend doesn't always translate.

Theatre in the Park helped forge Raleigh's Sister Cities relationship with Compiègne while performing its annual musical comedy adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" there in 1989.

Twenty years ago, French audiences loved it, except when Theatre in the Park executive director Ira David Wood III improvised one of Scrooge's lines, delivered in Lewis' "Laaay-deeee!" voice.

"You could hear crickets chirping," Wood says. "I thought they didn't hear it, so I repeated it. As Lewis would say, 'Still nothing.'"

Off stage, Wood asked their cultural liaison: The French worship Lewis, n'est-ce pas?

She said yes but "we've never heard his real voice before. He's dubbed in France."

Fifty-five cast, crew and staff members will heed the lesson when they return to Compiègne to perform "A Christmas Carol" Nov. 26 and 27.

Public tickets for the Dec. 8-16 run in Raleigh go on sale today.

Joyeux anniversaire

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker visited Compiègne in 2008 for its 90th anniversary celebration of the end of World War I. Compiègne vice mayor Michele LeChetalier, who held the same post in 1989, urged Meeker at that time to send Theatre in the Park back to France.

"[The show] is very popular there," Meeker says. "It gives many of our actors and actresses a chance to visit our sister city."

The trip to France will also celebrate the 35th anniversary of Wood's unique musical take on the Christmas classic. Wood, as Scrooge, musicians Rodney Marsh and Tom Bryan, and technical director Tim Ruffin have been with the show the longest.

The trip will cost $107,000. Profits from a spring run of "Romeo and Juliet," starring actress Evan Rachel Wood, Wood's daughter, went to the trip. Cast, crew and staff were also each responsible for raising $1,400.

The troupe will celebrate Thanksgiving in Compiègne.

"You haven't lived until you've had Thanksgiving dinner prepared for you by French chefs," Wood says.

En concert

Theatre in the Park will perform a concert version of "A Christmas Carol" in Compiègne. It will be shorter to appease French tastes, with a smaller cast and no sets to cut costs.

"To be honest, it's almost like we're taking a whole new show," Ruffin says.

In Compiègne, the band will join the cast on stage as part of the set. They'll rely on projections and lights to transition between scenes. The Lamplighter will introduce each scene in French.

"The show is full of singing and dancing, and I think they'll receive it every bit as well as in 1989; and they loved it in 1989," Ruffin says.

Wood, as he does every year, has dropped in new bits for the French audience. The troupe will rely on improvisation while doing more with less in France.

"We're used to the improvisation; we're semi-, sort of jazz musicians anyway," says Bryan, who plays electric bass in the band. "We're alert for something to be playful with."

Wood is eager to slip into the show the phrase French students learn when they begin learning English, "My tailor is rich!" It worked in 1989.

"They die laughing," he says. "When in doubt, 'My tailor is rich!'"

Les souvenirs

Memories of the first trip hit all over the emotional map. Marsh, the woodwind expert in the band, was seeing France for the first time.

"All I wanted to do was sit at sidewalk cafés and smoke and drink," he says.

But after a visit to Notre Dame, the bus left Marsh and a new girlfriend he'd brought on the trip. An English-speaking hotel maître d' had to call their hosts, 50 miles away in Compiègne, to ask where they were staying.

They waited three hours to hear their hotel was on the other side of Paris. "Everyone thought we'd been kidnapped," Marsh says.

Ruffin recalls having to persuade French stagehands to use spotlights on the dancers. The French worried the lights would shine in the actors' eyes and they'd lose their footing.

"It pretty much took an act of Congress to convince them," Ruffin says. "It wasn't like they didn't want to cooperate; it was just totally foreign to them."

Ruffin recalls going to a party thrown by a local viscount at his chateau. Plenty of wine and food blurred the cultural barriers. By evening's end, a butler played show tunes and rock anthems on a pipe organ as everyone sang along. "It was so wacky, so bizarre, yet so wonderful," Bryan says." Part of the wonder was being homesick but being made to feel so at home."

In 1989, the company waded in world history, traveling Europe two weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. Wood also touched family history.

His uncle, 1st Lt. Carroll T. Wood, fought as part of the 1944 Normandy invasion during World War II. He lost his legs after stepping on a land mine. Still in France, he died two months later and was buried in the American cemetery above Omaha Beach.

Someone in the Compiègne group -- her father had been a member of the French Resistance during the war -- located the grave at the Colleville/Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer cemetery -- Section C, Grave 29. She told Wood, "[Your uncle] came here to save us. He died alone. You must go."

Wood was the first family member to visit the grave. "Opening night, when [I] sang 'Noel' a cappella, it was very meaningful, like I'd completed a circle," Wood says.

Un spectacle familial

Wood, Ruffin, Bryan and Marsh have been doing "A Christmas Carol" the longest -- 35 years for Wood and Ruffin, 34 for Bryan and Marsh. "I can't decide if that's really cool or really pathetic," Bryan says. "But it's been fun."

"A Christmas Carol" is the company's big money-maker. It attracted nearly 25,000 of the company's 34,000 total attendees in 2008-09. Theatre in the Park will do three shows in Compiègne, four if ticket sales warrant it.

The show has starred "Malcolm in the Middle" star Frankie Muniz; Michael C. Hall, star of Showtime's "Dexter"; Terrence Mann, the original Javert in "Les Miserables,"and Wood's daughter.

Other cast members have performed in "A Christmas Carol" for Theatre in the Park for years. The cast and crew and their families have grown up with it. It's a habit.

"It's not hard to do," Marsh says. "I've done it so long it's hard to think of a reason not to do it. It was more fun when I was 25 years old and all the dancers and the cast were my age. ... But it's tradition."

Ruffin thinks "A Christmas Carol" works for Americans and French alike because of that shared history.

"I don't want to sound corny but [the show] has its own life," Ruffin says.

"In France, when we get to the 'Noel' at the end, it will have the same feel. It will be Christmas when we leave."

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