[Newark] Star Ledger

Holiday Entertainment Guide

Dickens of a Role
Frank Langella brings wealth of talent to the part of Scrooge
By Randy Gener
for the Star Ledger

New York -- Unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, Frank Langella strongly believes in opening himself up to new experiences.

"Scrooge starts out as an angry man, deeply in pain and, without knowing it, distanced from the world," says Langella, who plays the miser this holiday season in "A Christmas Carol" at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden.  "He just doesn't want to be bothered with anybody. He just goes along every day and says, 'Oh, my life is okay. I go to work. I come home. I do what I need to do. Nobody affects me. Nobody gets to me. It's safer this way. It's quieter. I don't have all the pain and anger and hurt, all of the things that happen when there's human interaction.' "

Langella's current preoccupation lies far outside of Scrooge's walled-off emotions. At 62 [Sol's note: he is 60, born in 1940], an age when many either slow down or think of retiring from the rat race, the actor has chosen not to play it safe. Starting Nov. 24, in his first appearance on a New York musical stage, he will sing and dance in "A Christmas Carol," which features songs by Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens ("Seussical") and is staged by director/choreographer Susan Stroman ("The Music Man," "Contact"). 

"I've done 'My Fair Lady' at the Houston Grand Opera about ten years ago," Langella recalls. [see photo in the Gallery of this web site] "That was my only foray into any kind of professional musical comedy world. So, when I was offered the part of Scrooge, I thought, 'Well, let's see if I can do this.' It's kind of terrifying to see if I can sing and dance and still bring off the elements of character that I'm used to playing."

Langella, who began his career as a folk singer in 1959 before his New York stage debut in "The Immoralist" in 1963, has taken on Scrooge following several classic star turns on Broadway, among them Strindberg's "The Father," Coward's "Present Laughter" and the title role in Roundabout Theatre Company's "Cyrano de Bergerac."

Since repeating his Broadway performance as Dracula on screen in 1979, Langella's film work has been prolific and versatile. (His latest screen roles were in Adrian Lyne's remake of "Lolita," Roman Polanski's "The Ninth Gate" and Denys Arcand's "Stardom.") But not everything has been memorable. Perhaps the only positive thing to come out of "Eddie," the woebegone 1994 basketball comedy, was meeting his co-star, Whoopi Goldberg. The two began a five-year relationship that led to Langella's 1995 divorce from his first wife, Ruth. Last May, however [March, actually], Goldberg and Langella parted amicably; they even told Variety Magazine that they intended to work together someday.

Caught after a Friday run-through of "A Christmas Carol," a Radio City Entertainment production that has been rehearsing in the new 42nd Street Studios in Times Square, Langella reveals that he is about to fly to California, where he is shooting the pilot of "The Beast," a new TV series for ABC. Langella portrays a media mogul, a cross between Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, who turns the cameras on subordinates at his 24-hour news organization.

One of the reasons Langella can juggle several projects at once is that he loathes to treat the acting process as a precious commodity. He doesn't like to research roles. He learns his lines very quickly. Once he's handed a script, he focuses on what he calls "the basic instincts of a character."

"I feel most strongly about the karma of Charles Dickens' story," Langella says. "There's a very simple line in this play: It's never too late to change. ... Sometimes when you shut down all feeling and all sensation and you are invulnerable to love and pleasures, you don't realize for a long time how dead you are.

"Through this miracle of Dickens, this wonderful conceit of three ghosts visiting him one night, Scrooge wakes on Christmas morning and realizes that he can change," Langella continues. "He can make his life not only better for himself, but for everybody else around him. ... I understand this. I understand that at this particular time in my life, the more complicated it is, the more you do in fact involve yourself in the lives of other people, and the more you give to them, the better your life is."

"A Christmas Carol -- The Musical" will also mark the first time Langella's son and daughter will see this 90 minute holiday spectacular. "I've not seen it," he admits. "They'll be seeing it for the first time when I do it, which is going to be kind of wonderful."

Born in Bayonne, Langella grew up in South Orange, where he spent his high school years.
"I spent my formative life in New Jersey," he says. "I moved away out of New Jersey when I was about 17 years old. I've basically lived in New York most of my life, since I left for college. Most of my family members and relatives -- practically -- still live in Maplewood, Bound Brook, Hackettstown, Jersey City and Bayonne."

Since Madison Square Garden's theatre is a cavernous space, Langella is also anticipating what it would be like to fill it with his larger-than-life performance as Scrooge. "You know, it seats some 5,600 people. It's an enormous place. We have a live orchestra of some 40 pieces and a cast that's close to 65 to 80 people. With the chorus of young kids, that adds up to more than 100 people onstage. It's thrilling."

As originally conceived by the late Mike Okrent, this seventh annual "Christmas Carol" sprawls with 350 feet of scenery that will transport audiences to Dickens' London, complete with ghostly dances, holographic lights and falling snow. Meanwhile, the lobby is transformed into a 19th-century Victorian marketplace. 

This is also the seventh time Stroman has choreographed the holiday production, but her first time directing it, since the death earlier this year of Okrent, her husband.

And has Stroman been able to successfully free the song and dance in Langella's soul?

"It's wonderful to watch her draw out of everybody the best of them and still get what she wants, as all good directors can do," he says admiringly.

After 40 years as an actor, the Tony Award-winning Langella never suspected he would one day play Scrooge.

"Oh, no, because in my head I'm still young Fred, the nephew," he replies. "I didn't automaticvally think, 'Oh my, my, I'm too young for it.' I'm younger than he would be. I think Scrooge would be in his 70's or 80's even. I'm not that old. I'm going to play him my own age because you can be turned off and dead to the world at any age.

"Ebenezer doesn't have to be an old man. If anything, there's more hope for him if he's a younger man because that means he can go on and live for a while and enjoy his family and enjoy people. Maybe he can find a woman for himself because there's still time."

[Amen! says Sol!]