Allen Fitzpatrick is a Northwest treasure with experience on Broadway and, in my humble opinion, one of the best actors in Seattle. This month, Fitzpatrick takes his one-man show—adapted from the holiday classic A Christmas Carol—to six locations around Puget Sound. I had a chat with Fitzpatrick via Zoom and email.
On Playing Scrooge:
“Four years ago, Key City Public Theatre in Port Townsend asked me if I’d be interested in developing a solo show, and we mutually decided that A Christmas Carol would be an excellent choice for my first solo outing. I’d seen Patrick Stewart perform his solo version on Broadway in 1995, and Jefferson Mays was enjoying current success on Broadway with his solo version. I spent several months writing and re-writing the script, then self-directed it and debuted it in Port Townsend. This is its fourth year. Each December, I add more venues, and it will now play at nine different theaters—six in Washington and three in Michigan. I play approximately 20+ characters, and I love all of them. Of course, the story is really about Ebenezer Scrooge, a man who undergoes a massive life recalibration, so I’m most interested in playing his arc—just as when I played Scrooge in the ACT Theatre production years ago. My show has proven, over and over, to be a joyful experience for audiences. They enjoy seeing my simpler version, unencumbered by too-heavy production values. They get to employ their own imaginations, and people simply love it.”
Broadway Baby:
“I would go back to New York for a Broadway show—certainly. It gets complicated because they don’t just hand out Broadway roles. You have to go to New York to audition and be part of that process. And it’s far more complicated when you’re 3,000 miles away. But if the theater gods smiled upon me and an offer came along to return to New York for six months or a year on Broadway, I would do so. Though, honestly, you have to make Broadway salary to really afford to live in the city. So I don’t think I could even go and do an off-Broadway show. It would have to be a Broadway show. But in the meantime, I’m still committed in a lot of ways—both emotionally and philosophically—to working in the Seattle community as it emerges, like communities all over the United States, from the shutdown, which had very serious effects on the finances of many theaters. Many regional theaters closed their doors permanently as a result, or lost their theater homes. So I’m glad I’m here, in this kind of renaissance—this rising from the ashes of regional theater—and happy and proud to be part of it.”
Come and Meet Those Dancing Feet:
“I remember that show [the 2001 revival of 42nd Street]. We had opened, and we were performing when 9/11 happened. We closed down, along with every other Broadway show, and weren’t sure how long it was going to be. But we were one of the first to come back online, and we weren’t quite sure how we were going to be perceived. The audiences were so thrilled, having gone through this national tragedy and mourning it, to see a show like 42nd Street, which was so filled with joy and escapism. I’d never felt something like that before. But how much joy that particular show can bring to folks.”
Fifth Avenue Theatre vs. Broadway:
“I’ll say this, because I’ve said it before. When I first came out in 2005 to play Sweeney Todd in David Armstrong’s production at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, the thing that I didn’t know anything about Seattle—and therefore very little about the Fifth Avenue Theatre—was how shocked I was to discover that the standards across the board were commensurate with those of Broadway. The amount of care that went into the creation of the costumes and the set, the whole structure of the organization—was very much like Broadway, taken extremely seriously. And it was that extraordinarily high standard, which I was familiar with, that prompted me to want to stick around and come back again and again. I was bicoastal for a while. So the short answer is that it’s just like working on Broadway, except that when you open a show here, you know exactly how long it’s going to run. You’re not going to close on opening night, as some Broadway shows do, and you’re also not going to run for a year. But you have your three-and-a-half or four-and-a-half-week run, and you can structure your life around that. But other than the scheduling, the standards are, for me, precisely what I experienced during the shows I did on Broadway.”
See Fitzpatrick all month long at one of these locations:
- December 14 ~ Aspire Repertory Theatre, Seattle, WA (aspirerep.org)
- December 15 ~ Bush House Inn, Index, WA (bushhouseinn.com)
- December 17 & 18 ~ Tacoma Little Theatre, Tacoma, WA (tacomalittletheatre.com)
- December 20 ~ Admiral Theatre/The Source, Bremerton, WA (admiraltheatre.org)
- December 22 ~ Vashon Center for the Arts, Vashon, WA (vashoncenterforthearts.org)
- December 24 ~ Key City Public Theatre, Port Townsend, WA (keycitypublictheatre.org)
