Ghost from Christmas past to return

By Chitralekha Basu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-20 13:09

When Chris Verrill, a media and e-marketing professional from San Francisco, held the very first shows of The Christmas Carol, in December 2006 in Beijing's Canadian International School auditorium, there were just about 10 people in the audience.

The maiden production of the nascent-born Beijing Playhouse ran for 20 nights, undaunted, and the last show drew a near full house.

The next production, Guys and Dolls, was a runaway hit. Broadway musicals had caught on in Beijing.

"It was Chris' idea to do the kind of play that you could take your family to," said Michael Gralapp, who is directing Mark Brown's The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge, to be staged this Christmas. "As it is we have enough greyness in our lives, we want the audience to laugh with us."

Gralapp, who is the director of a Beijing-based head-hunting company, stumbled into acting. Pushed by his wife to audition for Guys and Dolls, he landed the part of the gangster, Big Jule. That was the beginning of an enduring love affair with the stage. So much that even if he does not have a part in the group's next production, he is happy "moving the furniture".

Unlike Gralapp, Rodney Archer, who is assisting him to direct the new production, in which a year after The Christmas Carol (based on a short story by Charles Dickens), the pinch-fisted Scrooge meets the ghosts from the past to sort out old issues, comes from a theater background.

The master's degree holder from the Virginia Conservatory of Performing Arts said that it was natural for him to be on the lookout for a stage when he came to Beijing to be a teacher. In his five years in Beijing he has acted in five plays, done five movies (including playing Molotov in the just-released film Founding of a Republic), appeared in four TV serials and TV commercials.

All this, he says, is courtesy of Beijing Playhouse, where he debuted as one of the three ghosts, dressed in kunqu opera garb, in The Christmas Carol and has been in all the plays since.

His square-jawed, authoritarian face is often recognized on the streets, from Beijing to Qingdao.

But directing/choreographing a show gives him no less a high. "I choreographed the sword fight in Romeo and Juliet. At one point there were three separate fights on the stage at the same time. And to think that none of those actors, wielding the sledge-rapiers with ease, had held a sword before," said Rodney, with childish glee.

The best part of being with Beijing Playhouse, said Gralapp, is the chance to be a part of a happy multicultural family.

Drawn from open auditions for each play, the cast members represent a new, diverse assemblage each time. "For three months during the rehearsals it's almost like being locked together. But I go into a depression when it's over."