Christine Laitta, Aaron Galligan-Stierle Join Michael Cerveris’ Scrooge and a Cast of Dozens at the Byham Theater
By SHARON EBERSON
Some performers we know for decades, some come and go; the set has had makeovers, the lobby’s aglow … and Pittsburgh CLO’s A Musical Christmas Carol is off and running in 2023.
You need a scorecard (or PCLO’s invaluable Artist Database) to keep track of who is new and who is rejoining the annual show, with its cast of dozens alongside two-time Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris, in his second year as Ebenezer Scrooge.
For more than 30 years, the holiday tradition has helped launch careers and embraced locally-based performers, often working with starry names such as Tom Atkins, Patrick Page, Richard Thomas and Cerveris.
and Aaron Galligan-Stierle as Bob Cratchit
in Pittsburgh CLO’s A Musical Christmas Carol. (kgtunney Photography)
Among the newcomers this year is Broadway veteran Aaron Galligan-Stierle, a Wheeling, West Virginia native who is head of the musical theater program at Slippery Rock University. His first appearance for Pittsburgh CLO was this past summer, as Benny Southstreet in Guys & Dolls, and now he has taken on the role of Bob Cratchit, played for many years by Jeffrey Howell and, most recently, Jerreme Rodriguez.
Galligan-Stierle is well aware of the tradition he is now a part of, and the shoes he will be filling.
His warm welcome to the show included a task all PCLO Cratchits are bound to fulfill. It comes as the show opens to the maltreated clerk, writing in a ledger.
“It was immediately pointed out, literally within the first 10 minutes of me being there, that the last ledger was completely filled by Jeff, and he took it home with him when he left, and now this one has just started,” the new Bob Cratchit said.
He was told what he writes is up to him, but he wants to make sure it engages future Cratchits.
“So I’ve already started to brainstorm. ‘Am I writing a short story? Am I talking about the weather? This is going to be clearly one of my very important responsibilities here, and I’m excited to play with it,” Galligan-Stierle said.
A relative newbie to the show, although she is among the most recognizable faces on local musical theater stages, is Christine Laitta, who appeared in the Musical Christmas Carol ensemble from 1994-1999, bridging the years from the original Scrooge, Edmund Lyndeck, to Bingo O’Malley, and back to Lyndeck.
This year, Laitta steps into the dual roles of Scrooge housekeeper Mrs. Dilber and the amiable Mrs. Fezziwig, played for many years by Terry Wickline.
Laitta said there will be nods to her popular predecessor, but she is loving the collaborative process encouraged by director Scott Evans and is making the roles her own.
As Mrs. Dilber, she shares two pivotal scenes with Cerveris – establishing her disdain aside Scrooge’s lonely wretchedness on Christmas Eve, then she is the first to see the transformed Scrooge, after the visitation of three well-known Dickensian Ghosts.
“With Michael, the level of play is so freeing,” Laitta said of Cerveris. “We rehearsed our two big scenes together, and I felt like a minute went by, but it was like 35 minutes.”
Having the opportunity to start fresh in their scenes “was like Christmas, my birthday and Hanukkah and a bunch of holidays all wrapped up in one moment,” she said. “He is so generous, so playful. That for me felt amazing.”
Both Laitta and Galligan-Stierle noted the warm embrace of their current castmates.
“I love the generous spirit of the ensemble,” Laitta said. “The ensemble really envelopes the show. They’re in it throughout, and there is a generosity of helpfulness through the rehearsal process to all of the newbies.”
“It actually couldn’t have been more wonderful,” Galligan-Stierle said of the welcoming atmosphere. “So many people have such rich histories and knowledge of so many aspects of the production, that there’s a real ease in the process. … There’s just a real confidence, which is really thrilling to have, and the people couldn’t be more welcoming and excited to have me there.”
As Mrs. Fezziwig to Tim Hartman’s Mr. Fezziwig, Laitta is the patroness of a Christmas party that foretells the man Ebenezer Scrooge (played as a young man by Carnegie Mellon junior John Paul Berry) will become.
Her approach, Laitta said, is “a sense of embracing the community of partygoers, trying to broaden our scope and make it more about the experience as a whole, for all the people at the party. How do we connect with those people? How do we make them feel like part of our family? The changes are very small, but I think they matter.”
As a part of the final scene, when Scrooge awakens to a brand new world view, Laitta has enjoyed working out Mrs. Dilber’s reactions, after her character has been ill-treated for so long by Scrooge.
“It’s like the combination of everything Mrs. Dilber wants. She wants him to see her. She wants him to be a human. And it’s this lovely moment. I really get caught up in it because there’s so much silliness leading up to it, when she thinks he’s just playing with her. But then when I bite the coin [to see if a gift from Scrooge is real], it’s like I realize that the magic has happened. I love that. Selfishly, I love that it’s just the two of us on stage,” she said of sharing the scene with Cerveris.
For Galligan-Stierle, the show continues his own holiday tradition of working in Christmas-themed musicals. On Broadway, along with roles in The Phantom of the Opera and the 2009 revival of Ragtime, he played Papa Who in Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He toured in the latter, as well as in the national tour of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.
This is his first time in any version of A Christmas Carol, and it was his daughter who got the first look at the show, on a class trip last year.
“She came home just raving about and was like, ‘Dad, this show is so good. You got to try to get in that next year,’ “ he recalled.
The man who will play the father of six Cratchits has two daughters, ages 9 and 11.
“I asked [Aubree Liscotti], who plays Tiny Tim, ‘How old are you?’ And when she said 9, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s exactly the age of my daughter!’ So I’m very familiar with that age and how they play, and it’s been great,” Galligan-Stierle said of his Cratchit kids.
His real-life daughters will be at the Byham Theater for opening night on Friday, when their dad makes his first ledger entry as Bob Cratchit, and he and Laitta become part of the lore of a Pittsburgh holiday tradition.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh CLO’s A Musical Christmas Carol is at the Byham Theater, Downtown, December 15-23, 2023. Tickets: visit https://www.pittsburghclo.org/shows/a-musical-christmas-carol or call 412-456-6666.
NOTABLE: For a toy drive partnering with Charlie Batch’s Best of the Batch Foundation, audience members are encouraged to bring an unwrapped toy and add it to collection in the inner lobby. On December 23, at noon, there will be a adapted sensory friendly performance: https://www.pittsburghclo.org/plan/amcc-sensory-friendly.
* Christine Laitta is the current director of the annual musical satire/fundraiser Off the Record, which is produced by Sharon Eberson.
Categories: Our Posts, Show Previews
Leave a Reply Cancel reply