Thom Bray channels Charles Dickens himself in ‘A Christmas Carol’

Published 4:30 pm Thursday, December 19, 2024

A great many theater companies do “A Christmas Carol” each holiday season.

But not many feature an act such as Thom Bray, who plays Charles Dickens and reads the famous Dickens story live on stage. It’s a Victorian reading based on Dickens’ original reading text, and features Bray voicing the characters in the story.

Bray puts on two performances at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21 at CoHo Theatre, 2257 N.W. Raleigh St. It’s put on by CoHo Productions and Julia Bray.

For tickets, see cohoproductions.org.

It’s also promoted as a reimagined audience interactive presentation. Said publicity: “Here is the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and his Christmas Eve conversion from ‘covetous old sinner’ to ‘as good a friend as the City of London would ever know.’”

It’s inspired by stories of how Dickens would take to the stage to give dramatic readings of the story to sold-out crowds in the mid-1860s.

Thom Bray has been a professional actor for more than 50 years. He’s been on stage with the likes of Profile Theatre, and has enjoyed several movie and TV roles (and writing/producing jobs) and did voice-over work, which prepared him for the many voices he creates in “A Christmas Carol” such as Scrooge and Tiny Tim. He currently teaches Writing For A Screen at Portland State University.