The first national tour of Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol is underway and stops in Bloomington for two shows this weekend.
The decorated multi-instrumentalist and songwriter wrote entirely new songs for an adaptation of the Dickensian tale, which moves the setting to a town in East Tennessee at the height of the Great Depression.
Veteran stage and screen actor Ken Orman plays Ebenezer Scrooge in the touring production, which opened in 2019 in Boston with a different cast—his first time playing that role.
“It’s my first Scrooge,” he said in a phone call with WGLT. “And it’s really kind of cool to be an American Scrooge.”
The characters and nuts and bolts of this Christmas Carol are the same. Scrooge is the greedy owner of a coal mine that's the beating heart of its town’s economy. Orman said he spent several years working in finance, which gave him an idea of who his Scrooge is.
“I’m very familiar with his attitude,” he said. “It’s still pervasive in our culture, even today.”
As with the original, three ghosts visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve, giving him the motivation to use his power for good, rather than increasing the suffering of those less fortunate than him. Orman said the similarities between his Scrooge and the classical Christmas Carol is rooted in the fear and greed that come from dominance over something. Changing Scrooge’s mindset, he said, comes having unconditional love shown by Tiny Tim [a role shared by Logan Hannigan and Reid Clarke] and others around Scrooge, despite his flaws.
Orman has intentionally avoided the temptation to draw parallels to current day tech titans like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, whose wealth and influence can be used to wield extraordinary power.
“It’s so relevant,” he said of his character. “There’s a lot that’s happening right now that is so outside of a loving heart. For whatever reason, it’s missing. I’m not sure what it is about the importance of being completely dominant in a field—I don’t know what that is. How does that happen? Why does that replace decency and goodness?”
For some, it doesn’t. Dolly Parton is arguably dominant in her field but refuses to forget where she came from: an extremely poor and loving household in the heart of the Smoky Mountains.
“She is so committed to uplifting that section of the country,” Orman said. “Eastern Tennessee has been her life. She loves the people. She loves the energy. Obviously, she grew up there, and she carries that forward in everything she does.”
Orman said he hears Dolly’s voice when singing Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, which leans heavily on the unique sounds developed in the Appalachian Mountains.
“She’s authentic. It’s like a magic trick,” he said. “Whatever it is that she feels when she writes, we feel it. She is something else, that woman. And I’m just so grateful I have this chance to bring this story to the communities who are looking forward to seeing it. That’s been a real treat.”
Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol takes place at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 600 N. East St., Bloomington. Tickets $45-$114 at 309-434-2777 and artsblooming.org.
