Clockwise, top to bottom: Fracaswell Hyman, Scott Davis (center), Steve Vernon, Vanessa Welch and Randy Davis perform in the radio show, “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.” (Port City Daily photo/Courtesy Big Dawg Productions)
WILMINGTON — Usually this time of year, at least one staging of “A Christmas Carol” is going on in Wilmington. While entertainment venues, and thus theater companies, have been thwarted by Covid protocols from doing in-person shows, Big Dawg Productions is finding a way to bring the famed tale of redemption into the homes of theater lovers.
Big Dawg has launched “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” as a radio drama — or as it would be coined in 2020, “an audio presentation” — available to stream through Dec. 22. It’s one of many ways the story has been told and retold since Dickens published the original 1843 novella, “A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.” Tom Mula’s stage version was introduced to Big Dawg’s artistic director Steve Vernon in the early 2000s, thanks to friend and fellow actor Randy Davis.