Trinity Bay actor is a man of 40 Dickens’ characters

By Chad Feehan
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
November 24, 2023 Edition

A one-man performance of “One Christmas Carol” is coming to a Carbonear theatre this holiday season.
Based on Charles Dickens’ original 1865 script, “One Christmas Carol” will be performed entirely by actor Andrew Legg, in which he will be playing over 40 characters with minimal prop and costume work in just over an hour.
“It’s all done by physicality and changes to my voice,” Legg said.
The play is adapted from Dickens’ 1843 novella A Christmas Carol in which a greedy, elderly businessman undergoes a process of redemption after a series of harrowing encounters with ghosts.
The idea behind the simplicity is Legg’s trust that the audience will pick up on his physical and verbal cues. He tested the play with more involved costume changes, but found the process distracting and cumbersome.
“The audience will follow if I make a commitment to the sound of each character,” he said. “If I just be each character, a hat’s not going to change it.”
Legg found the script one Christmas during an idle period while living in Alberta. He noted the timeless feel of it, determining that the cadence and feel of it was something he could make work.
Since then, performing the play has become a semi-annual tradition which gets his mind and soul into the spirit of Christmas.
“The words and the premises are so good,” he said. “Dickens himself was really committed to a lot of social change.”
Legg and his wife Franziska Legg moved to New Chelsea, Trinity Bay on a whim in 2021 so she could pursue a position with the post office in Hants Harbour.
Since moving to the province, he has appeared in locally produced television shows including Hudson and Rex and SurrealEstate.
This is the second year in a row Legg will perform “One Christmas Carol” in Carbonear. This time around he is expanding the run to include shows in OId Perlican, Heart’s Content, and St. John’s.
“I wanted to do it a few more times just to see what the response would be and kind of build a new Christmas tradition for people,” he said.
Legg considers “One Christmas Carol” as “the perfect play,” as Dickens himself was an actor and was able to craft the script with the intimate knowledge of how it would translate to stage.
“I simply have these conversations between two characters playing each part with just a slight tilt of my head,” he said.
Theatre-goers can watch Legg’s impressive performance at St. Andrews by the Sea in Old Perlican on December 2nd, Princess Shiela Nagiera Theatre in Carbonear on December 7th, Hearts Content Center for the Arts on December 16th, and at Erin’s Pub in St. John’s on December 17th.

Andrew Legg