The SAC will offer a Broadway-style gift with this show at 8 p.m. Friday at the Clark State Performing Arts Center. The show is appropriate for all audiences, and tickets are still available.
Kamin’s skills range from starting as a magician to a mime to a physical comedian to author and lyricist, and now touring as one of the meanest characters this side of the Grinch. He’s happy to share his talent here again after several years.
“I have a special fondness for Springfield. This is an amazing city,” he said. “One of the perks of traveling in a show like this is the people I meet, not just employees but quite good friends.”
Kamin met former longtime SAC executive director Chris Moore in the 1970s when both were beginning their careers. Moore exposed local audiences to Kamin’s talents and helped build his career and discovered a performer audiences responded to.
“Chris and I were like two pieces of flint who sparked and it was an effective residency, so I’m so pleased to see Chris and (current SAC executive director) Tim Rowe because of this great, warm friendship,” said Kamin.
His talents were used by Hollywood to craft films using Charlie Chaplin’s influence in movies starring Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp and with director Tim Burton for “Mars Attacks.”
Kamin confessed he’d never read “A Christmas Carol” or seen any of the movie or stage adaptations, but knew despite the character’s reputation that Scrooge had terrible life lessons in his youth that affected his later life. He’d lost a sister young and the love of his life, hardening him against the world and driving him to make money.
“‘A Christmas Carol is about grieving,” he said. “It’s about how your heart gets frozen and what it takes to get it unfrozen. In a lot of ways, the show is about loss.”
Kamin said bah, humbug to other Scrooge performances so to approach it as new, to find what it meant to him. He’s pleased talking to audiences after a show and finding they are surprised and gets them talking, which is refreshing to see. He’s also pleased people like the full-out musical approach.
You could also consider Kamin a triple threat as not just actor and lyricist but he also revives his magician skills here. Director Randy West requested Kamin come up with some simple magic tricks to add to the journey the ghosts take Scrooge on.
But in the end, it’s Dickens’ words that Kamin finds the most beauty in, like coloring parts of a page, and he thinks that will come across for the audience.
“It has been exhilarating, and I’m having the time of my life. This is a joyous production working with a great classic of Western art and the joy of story,” he said.
HOW TO GO
What: “A Christmas Carol”
Where: Clark State Performing Arts Center, 300 South Fountain Ave., Springfield
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15
Admission: $31.50-47.50 (convenience and handling charges will also be added)
More info: www.springfieldartscouncil.org/event/carol/