Scrooge Meets Nicholas Nickleby : CSUN Chamber Singers to Open Festival Honoring Dickens With an Original Play Based on Author’s Characters

It’ll be anything but a bleak house at the Cal State Northridge Student Union Saturday night, when the university’s Chamber Singers open the Dickens Festival: six nights of singing, dining and behind-the-scenes drama at a 19th-Century English inn.

The 16 chamber singers, all students, will perform an original play, based loosely on a short story by Charles Dickens, which brings together several of his famous characters including Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit and Ralph and Nicholas Nickleby. They are among the unexpected guests who are forced to stay at the Hollytree Inn, when a terrible storm forces passengers in three horse-drawn coaches to seek shelter an an establishment owned by Cobbs and Emily Trotwood.

The innkeepers “have to decide how to feed and entertain all the people and keep them from attacking each other,” said Ed Schneider, assistant director of the Chamber Singers and the show’s conductor.

Schneider did much of the research for the play, which was written by Jan Goldstein, a Woodland Hills writer and composer.

“Dickens loved going to inns and people-watching,” Schneider said. “So it seemed natural to have this play at an inn.”

While the Trotwoods serve dinner to their guests at the Hollytree Inn, students serve audience members a meal of vegetables, rice and stuffed game hens.

After dinner, the actors mingle with the audience as the play continues.

“Everyone in the audience is treated as if they were guests” at the inn, said senior Roy Spicer, who plays the happy-go-lucky Nicholas Nickleby. “We make them feel just as much a part of the show as we are.”

Nicholas Nickleby tries to spread the good cheer of Christmas and is constantly toasting the audience. But other characters aren’t so friendly .

“I’ll probably be a little leery of talking to someone who’s below my class,” said junior Tim Smith, who plays the stuffy Ralph Nickleby.

The Chamber Singers performed the Dickens show for the first time last year, after several years of staging an Elizabethan festival. From now on, the group plans to alternate the shows every other year.

Phyllis Cardoza, a graduate student who plays Mrs. Cratchit, said that last year a few audience members became frustrated with the singers, who take their roles very seriously.

“Some people asked if I was a CSUN student, and I had to say, ‘I’m from London. I’m not certain what you’re talking about,’ ” Cardoza said. “You don’t let them pull you out of your character.” The singers perform in mid-19th-Century-style costumes. The upper-class men wear top hats, capes, black tails and shirts with wingtip collars; the women wear full-length gowns that show little cleavage.

“The Victorian era was a little prudish,” Schneider said.

The lower-class characters wear ripped knickers and torn skirts.

The Chamber Singers have been rehearsing the show all semester. “We’ve become really close as a group,” Smith said. “It’s been a lot of work. The hardest part is with the (British) accent.”

The Dickens Festival runs from Dec. 16 through Dec. 20 and closes on Dec. 22. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $24 and $28. San Fernando Valley Hall, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. For information call 818-885-2491 .