CONVERSATIONS David Catlin - Mr. Dickens' Hat - Northlight Theatre
Northlight Theatre’s world premiere of “Mr. Dickens’ Hat — A Play with Music” written and composed by Michael Hollinger is at last coming to the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. Originally slated for a November 2020 launch and postponed due to the pandemic, the show opens November 26 and is directed by David Catlin, a Lookingglass Theatre co-founder, ensemble member, director and actor with a long and impressive list of creative milestones including “Frankenstein,” “Moby Dick” and “Lookingglass Alice” scheduled to return next spring to the Water Tower Water Works theater.
Hoillinger’s play is set in and around events that occur in a Victorian hat shop in December 1865. In true Dickensian style, the multitude of robust characters in Hollinger’s work span the social spectrum of the day to emulate the contrasting attitudes of wealth and poverty. With original music that functions on multiple levels, Catlin’s bedrock understanding of Dickens’ work and the Victorian period, and a multi-talented cast, “Mr. Dickens’ Hat” is a highly-anticipated holiday season addition for all ages.
At the center of the play is a unique and relatable hero for our time. The story revolves around a girl named Kit, who at twelve is working in the hat shop to pay off her father’s debt in order to free him from debtor’s prison. The shop is home to the famous hat that Dickens used to haul water to victims of a train crash. Early on, Kit discovers devious plans afoot and the imaginative action adventure that unfolds over the ninety minute piece promises to be full of chilling intrigue, uproarious comedy and heartwarming music for the season.
The cast includes: Christine Bunuan (Lady Plume/Witslow), Cordelia Dewdney (Kit), Kasey Foster (Mrs. Prattle, Locksmith, Mother, Piggot), Mark David Kaplan (Mr. Garbleton, Gnat, Old Engineer, Polly), Ruchir Khazanchi (Ned, Countess, Styfflip, Mum), and Nick Sandys (Father, Fleece). Chuck Larkin serves as music director. The creative team includes set designer William Boles, costume designer Sully Ratke, lighting designer Jason Lynch and sound designer André Pluess.
On November 8, during a rehearsal break, we caught up with David Catlin via text to shed more light on the storyline and the development process, how Hollinger’s original lyrics and music are incorporated into the piece and the essential contribution that the cast has made to bringing the creative vision forward in telling Hollinger’s compelling and heartwarming tale.
ET: We know from shows like “Hard Times” at Lookingglass that you are particularly at home in Dickens’ world with his marvelous characters. It sounds like you and Michael Hollinger have taken a mutual fascination one step further, opening a treasure trove of possibilities. Talk about a few of those possibilities.
DC: Michael has written this beautiful play in the style of Dickens. And the characters and situations feel really very much of the moment. Even more so now than when we intended to do it a year ago. This play is filled with characters who feel isolated. Alone. Who have been crushed a bit by their circumstances and conditions and yet with all this darkness, with all this heaviness, there is this underlying joy. This soaring human spirit. There are all these skillfully wrought Dickensian characters who are at once hilarious and also deliciously nefarious and feeling the heaviness and ache of the world.
We have a bumbling constable who is looking for felons and ne’er-do-wells at every turn. We have an absent-minded father and maker of hats who is continuingly bursting the buttons on his new waistcoat. We have a character named Gnat who is not the brightest bulb in the chandelier but certainly the sweetest. And we have Kit who is twelve years old and working to pay off her father‘s debt to earn his release from prison.
ET: A new Dickensian story just in time for the holidays! How does it feel to be out of a zoom room and back in a theater with a creative team that is dealing with some of the same sensibilities that we’ve all lived through? What have the cast brought to the show from their own experiences?
DC: In fact, in the opening lyrics of the first song we hear: “Over and over the days go by|Swifter than birds the hours fly|Days that are lost can never be found|The hands on the clock go round and round.”
Time – over the last twenty months – has certainly flown by for us and those days we may never find again.
The song continues: “With weeks that are lost can never be found|Months that are lost can never be found|Years that are lost can never be found.”
We have all endured and lost much in these last twenty months. We have suffered and we have suffered separately, at an appropriate social distance. Isolated in our zoom meetings in our homes. There is this great quote from the Pickwick Papers that Michael puts at the front page of his play: “There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.” It does feel to me that the shadows have been darker than ever. Have felt grimmer than ever. More doom full than ever, not unlike perhaps Dickens version of that industrial age and that time. Being back in a space with a bunch of collaborators whose life calling is to bring stories into the world that illuminate the darker contours, that enliven and bring joy, is an extraordinary event that I am so grateful to be included in.
The play takes place over the course of a single night, December 21, 1865, the longest night of the year. It is the onset of a long and cold winter. Our hero, a young kid, finds herself in great peril trying to make it through the night on the icy tracks of a train trestle with her fate rumbling down the icy tracks in front of her while Mr. Fleece, our delicious villain, looms closer and closer. Will she survive? Will she be the hero of her own story?
ET: Six actors playing many characters in ninety minutes. It sounds like this cast needs many talents. Acrobatics? Magic? Sleight of hand?
DC: Each cast member is multi-talented. In addition to writing a brilliant play, Michael has composed a beautiful score & lyrics including holiday carols. Each actor sings in addition to taking on many characters, as well as playing instruments and animating William Boles set which is part 19th century Industrial structure and part playground.
Each cast member is also an inventive collaborator. Most of the intricate choreography and staging has been devised by members of the cast.
ET: How is the music integrated in the play? Is it used to move the story forward, set the scene or a hybrid?
DC: The music functions on all levels. There are blissful carols that capture the spirit of winter holidays, but also intone|articulate the moment. “Tar Black River” dredges up the muck from the bottom of the Thames: “What will you find at the bottom of the Thames? | Is the riverbed covered in jewels and gems? | No, the bottom is nothing but broken dreams|daft ambitions and desperate schemes|The runoff of a million wishful streams is the bottom of the tar black river.” This delivers Kit to her father in Queen’s Prison where he faces a long winter before spring will come. “Night Sleigh” has a driving pace that also underscores Kit’s initial escape through the London night before she is caught by her nemesis Fleece on the frozen train trestle. “Psalm” follows the crescendo of the play’s thrilling climax with the ethereally sung lyrics: “Calm, calm, night is calm…”
ET: I was about to say that after our last conversation about ‘Moby Dick’ that it was great to have you back on terra firma. But it sounds like the water flowing in the Thames still plays a big role in telling your stories.
DC: Definitely. I grew up in Pittsburgh – far from big bodies of water like the sea or our beloved Lake Michigan. But the Allegheny River held its own sway over me, whether jumping off train trestle bridges, canoe-camping along it’s many islands, or watching it flow by my town’s Riverside Park, it is an important part of who I am.
ET: It’s always a pleasure to chat with you. “Mr. Dickens Hat” is a highly anticipated show for the holiday season and this new collaboration with Northlight Theatre looks like a great opportunity to expand the unique style of storytelling that you’re known for. Thank you for all the insight into this fascinating new project.
DC: Thanks, Ed. Always grateful to chat with you!
REHEARSAL PHOTOS | Caleb Woodring, Colleen Schuldeis, and Mara Mihlfried
Northlight Theatre
presents the
World Premiere of
Mr. Dickens’ Hat
A Play with Music
Written and Composed by Michael Hollinger
Directed by David Catlin
Music Direction by Chuck Larkin
November 26, 2021 – January 2, 2022
9501 Skokie Blvd, Skokie, IL
(847) 673-6300
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