Arizona Theatre Company brings 'Scrooge' back to Tucson

Arizona Theatre Company this weekend is bringing back “Scrooge,” the holiday musical about a miserly businessman’s journey to redemption as he discovers the true meaning of Christmas.

But this year’s production will look different than last year.

The set from Emmy-winning designer Jason Ardizzone-West includes mechanical elements that transform the expansive set from scene to scene, with video enhancements adding to the visuals.

“When the audience comes in, they are going to see a production that looks like a full-scale Broadway production,” said ATC Artistic Director Matt August, who is directing the show.

The new production also features fleshed-out orchestrations to enhance playwright/songwriter Leslie Bricusse’s original soundtrack and “tweaks to the script that just get tighter and tighter,” he said.

“It’s a very big show and it’s a very heavy lift on ATC, as well,” August acknowledged. “The organization is performing just astonishingly with this. Our production team has built this and it’s very big and it takes a lot of people to run it. We will see how long we can bring it back.”

August last year said he would like to make “Scrooge” an annual holiday offering, akin to Ballet Tucson’s “The Nutcracker,” which the company will perform with Tucson Symphony Orchestra Dec. 20-22 at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.

“There is something that is very universal about this story that everybody can relate to, our feelings of insecurity, our feelings of alienation, our feelings of isolation, particularly now,” August said.

Tony Award-winning actor Shuler Hensley returns to play the titular role that he created last season — his first ever “Scrooge.”

“It’s one of those roles that you’re like, ‘Yeah, if I could find a way to be a part of it, I would love to try to do it,’” he said.

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Hensley is no stranger to playing the villain in holiday-themed plays. He made his stage debut at 6 playing Fritz in “The Nutcracker” in his native Georgia.

“That was my debut. I was spectacular,” he joked of playing the character who breaks the nutcracker. “Even at 6 years old I always liked the villain roles. I had a taste for it.”

In 2018, he played the Grinch in August’s production of “The Grinch” at Madison Square Garden; that show is still being produced nationwide, August said.

“Scrooge and Grinch have a lot of similarities,” August noted.

“Absolutely,” Hensley agreed in a three-way phone call during a break in rehearsals last week. “Except for the giant green furry costume.”

“Same character, different costume,” August added.

“But what’s interesting in characters like Ebenezer Scrooge and Grinch and Judd Frye (the character Hensley played in ‘Oklahoma!’ that earned him the Tony), these guys are considered the villains, but there are elements of them that are so relatable to people,” Hensley said. “If you can find those elements, it deepens your relationship with the audience. In the terms of Scrooge, we get to have a journey of redemption and people can relate to lost love, lost opportunity, miscommunication, fear. All these things that we as human beings go through daily and it’s part of these characters every day.”

Bricusse wrote the music and screenplay for the 1970 musical film “Scrooge,” starring Albert Finney. In 1992, he wrote the book and score for the stage adaptation.

The version we will see on the Temple of Music and Art stage is based on that 1992 stage play with some fine-tuning including adding new songs and a new finale, August said. All of the changes were made with Briscusse’s blessings before he died in 2021.