They're having a Dickens of a time at the Freakin' Coffee Shop in Courtenay's Tin Town — literally!
So you've heard of the singalong Sound of Music and the dressup Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well, get ready for the read-along version of Charles Dickens' Christmas classic A Christmas Carol.
If you want to read the part of Scrooge, Tiny Tim or anyone else in the story — and remember, no part is too small/the more the merrier — rush to the Freakin' Coffee Shop and sign up.
The public performance will take place Dec. 10 at 2 p.m., but Ray Garford is hoping that he can meet a few people ahead of time and hand out some scripts.
"I am not auditioning people for a show," says Garford, "but if we have a few people who had practised reading it through ahead of time, the end result will sound a lot crisper and the audience will get more out of it."
When asked why he is doing this production, and in this manner, he replies, "I would often hear of others in the Valley doing live readings of A Christmas Carol and I always felt a bit sad about not being invited to join in. I have been giving readings of the Harry Potter books for over a decade — mostly to captive student audiences — so I decided that it was time to do my own.
"Since the Freakin' Coffee Shop is such a warm and inviting space and they have agreed to pay me in coffee for doing it, how could I not?"
On a more serious note, Garford is an avid supporter of the notion of parents reading to kids "and Christmas time is such a wonderful time for stories. This isn't the two-hour movie version, with all the special effects and dancing girls; it just the Dickens, plain and simple. It is an hour well spent around a crackling fire, with family and a delightful tale, just the way it was when he first published it 150 years ago."
For more information, contact Ray Garford at rjgarford@shaw.ca or call 250-890-2072 and let him know you are interested.
— Ray Garford