The Old Curiosity Shop

Lookingglass Theatre Company returns to the world of Charles Dickens with a world premiere adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop, a grown-up fairy tale of dark despair, sentimentality and desperation, featuring some of the funniest and most bizarre of all Dickens' characters.
 
Lookingglass' new adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop is the fourth of five consecutive world premieres in the company's 2005/06  "Theatre Without a Net" season.  The play was conceived by Ensemble Member Raymond Fox, adapted by Fox with Ensemble Members Laura Eason and Heidi Stillman, and is directed by Ensemble Member Tracy Walsh. Previews of this rarely performed "Victorian Fairy Tale of Joy and Woe" are April 26-May 5.  Performances run through June 11 in the intimate Lookingglass Theater inside Chicago's historic Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Avenue at Pearson.
 
In Dickens' time, a curiosity shop was a place where one could buy second hand goods of an antique variety.  The Old Curiosity Shop begins in the gloomy environs of just such a shop, with Little Nell Trent tending to her ailing grandfather.   When the old man loses all his money, he is forced to borrow more from the grotesquely charming Mr. Quilp, arguably Dickens' most evil villain of all time.  Sadly, the old man gambles it away and loses his shop to Quilp, leaving Nell and her grandfather no choice but to flee London and Quilp's wicked avarice. As Nell and the old man journey through the English countryside, Quilp and a host of other malevolent and benevolent characters follow in hot pursuit.  As for the young girl's fate and that of the old man, as a kind schoolteacher reminds Nell during her travels, "There is nothing, no nothing innocent or good that dies and is forgotten."
 
The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens' fourth novel, was first serialized in his weekly periodical Master Humphrey's Clock, then published in full in 1841. Little Nell, one of his many heroines who was utterly devoted and kind, was born of Dickens' own personal loss, inspired by his beloved sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, whose death two years earlier still haunted him.   As Nell's saga first began to unfold in serial form, Dickens' readers increasingly shared his deep emotional involvement in her trials, and between installments wrote "imploring letters recommending poor little Nell to mercy."
 
Raymond Fox and Tracy Walsh first became enchanted with The Old Curiosity Shop when they took a course together on Dickens at Northwestern University in the late 1980's.  Nearly 20 years later, their program note for their world premiere staging reads "What ultimately compels us is that The Old Curiosity Shop is not so much a story of grief, but rather a celebration of life.  When those we love depart from us, how do we keep their legacy alive? How do we go on joyously in the face of loss?    Do we only have to – as Nell's good friend Kit Nubbles observes - tell again the tale of the good person who died?"
 
Lookingglass Ensemble Member Tracy Walsh makes her directorial debut with The Old Curiosity Shop.  Walsh assistant directed the Lookingglass shows La Luna Muda and Hard Times, and performed in Manuscript Found in Saragossa, Hillbilly Antigone, Secret in the Wings, Her Name was Danger, 28, In the Eye of the Beholder, S/M and All souls day. She has also appeared in shows at The Goodman Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Lincoln Center, and The Kennedy Center.  She has choreographed shows for The Goodman, Chicago Opera Theatre, Eclipse Theatre, Court and Lookingglass.
 
Lookingglass Ensemble Member Raymond Fox created The Old Curiosity Shop, and plays The Single Gentleman and other characters.   Fox most recently appeared in Tartuffe at Remy Bumppo Theatre and Manuscript Found in Saragossa at Lookingglass.  He played Midas in Metamorphoses on and off Broadway and at Lookingglass.  Additional credits include the Goodman Theatre, Court, Mark Taper Forum, Meadow Brook Theatre, Arden Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Indiana Repertory, American Repertory Theatre, Meadow Brook Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Next Theatre and Canada's Stratford Festival.   Fox is a graduate of Northwestern and the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard University.
 
Fox wrote the adaptation with Ensemble Members Laura Eason and Heidi Stillman. Eason has been an actor, writer, director, composer, musician and/or acrobat in more than 25 Lookingglass shows.  Lookingglass has produced her plays They All Fall Down: The Richard Nickel Story (co-written with Jessica Thebus), 28, and In the Eye of the Beholder (Jeff Citation, Best New Work)  Other produced plays include A Tale of Two Cities (commission) at Steppenwolf,  and Walkabout Theatre's acclaimed production of The Coast of Chicago at Lookingglass earlier this season. Stillman's adaptation credits include Hard Times (2001 Jeff Award), The Baron in the Trees, co-adapted with Larry DiStasi (Jeff nominated) and The Master and Margarita.  She also directed Hard Times at Lookingglass and the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia, and most recently co-directed Lookingglass' Hephaestus and Hillbilly Antigone.
 
The cast for The Old Curiosity Shop also features Eva Breneman, dialect coach for Lookingglass' Manuscript Found in Saragossa and Hillbilly Antigone, as Mrs. Jarley and others;  Thomas J. Cox, last seen at Lookingglass as Winstin Smith in 1984, now playing the evil villain Quilp; Lawrence E. DiStasi, a veteran of more than 25 Lookingglass productions including Lookingglass Alice and Manuscript Found in Saragossa, as Dick Swiveller and others;  introducing Lorri Hamm, featured in the 2004 independent film Brushfires, in her Chicago stage debut as Little Nell; Tony Hernandez, last seen at Lookingglass as Hephaestus, now playing Kit and others;  Elizabeth Ledo, recently seen in Northlight's The Chalk Garden, in her Lookingglass debut as The Marchioness and others; Lisa Tejero, seen in 1984 and Metamorphoses, as Sally Brass;  Troy West, seen in Great Men of Science, Nos. 21 & 22, Hard Times, and The Idiot, now playing the grandfather;  and Andrew White, director of 1984, last seen in Hillbilly Antigone, as Samson Brass and others.
 
Designers for The Old Curiosity Shop are Brian Sidney Bembridge (set), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), T.J. Gerckens (lights) and Andre Pluess (sound). Sara Gmitter is production stage manager.