38 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY DECEMBER 21-27, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com ONSTAGE Local English actor F. Howard Burnham has been mastering this gig for over 30 years— Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the famous Christmas story, presented by the author himself. One could say Burnham was inspired directly by Dickens, who made more money on dramatic readings of his bestseller than from selling the book. “It was the drug of success that destroyed him,” says Burnham, who began working on his inner Dickens before he left England, in 1998. “And the diet of brandy and Champagne.” He originally created this show in Malton, Yorkshire, England—where Dickens saw a lawyer’s dingy office that was the inspiration of Scrooge’s counting house. By the time Burnham moved to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the dramatic reading had developed into a fully memorized, costumed performance. Myrtle Beach audiences became so attached to this annual event that even when Burnham moved to Monterey County, in 2013, they would fly him out each year to perform at the Myrtle Beach Dickens Christmas Festival. Since the pandemic he has been performing locally, first at The Little House in Pacific Grove. In 2022, Burnham started to work with the Monterey County Theatre Alliance and Pacific Repertory Theatre, performing on the indoor stage at the Forest Theater in Carmel and raising money for their School of the Performing Arts. He gets help from them with music and lighting. The novella titled A Christmas Carol runs about 150 pages; Burnham is using about one-third of the material— the whole event takes about an hour. Burnham embodies Dickens organically, which is no surprise—he is Monterey County’s go-to English actor. Do you need an Englishman on stage? Better call Burnham. You can’t go wrong with the man who has performed as over 60 historical figures from the U.K., starting with the English-born Founding Father Thomas Payne, through Winston Churchill and Lewis Carroll, to…Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Perhaps you were lucky enough to get a sample of his holiday performance at the Dec. 7 edition of the Weekly’s Mic’d Up at The Press Club series. If not, much fun is ahead of you. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol 3pm Friday, Dec. 22 and Saturday, Dec. 23. Indoor Theater at the Forest Theater, Carmel. Pay what you can; proceeds benefit PacRep’s SODA and MCTA. Seating is limited. DANIEL DREIFUSS Better Call Burnham Local English actor F. Howard Burnham brings Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to life in Carmel. By Agata Pop˛eda F. Howard Burnham as Charles Dickens. Dickens wasn’t pleased when he found out that—due to lack of copyright law—others did staged readings of A Christmas Carol.
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