| Most actors in the theatre consider themselves fortunate if they get a chance to play the same character more than once – especially if it’s a major role. So count Stephen Hair 10 times lucky. This year marks his 10th performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in Theatre Calgary’s A Christmas Carol.
Now, if you think Scrooge, Charles Dickens’s larger-than-life miser and meany – the proto-Grinch – is hardly the kind of complex character that an actor needs to take more than one shot at, you’re not alone. So did Hair, back when he first took on the part in 1994.
"I think when I started I thought what everybody thinks," says the lean, ascetic-looking actor, unwinding after a student matinee performance in the Max Bell Theatre lobby. "I thought, Oh, it’s just old, miserly Scrooge. It’s just grumpy, grumpy to start with and then, at the end, you get Happy Pants."
And that’s how he initially performed it. "The first year or two I call the ‘farce Scrooge.’ I was playing him grotesquely huge and funny all the way through, and he shouldn’t be. But once I saw the effect the play was having on audiences – people actually weeping and being touched by it – I realized there was way more to the character. He started living inside me."
As well, over the years Hair, who is 53 now, has come closer in age to Scrooge and the old skinflint’s misery has gained more poignancy. "You start identifying with the character because you start understanding regrets – I wish I hadn’t done that, I wish I could change this," he says. "That kind of stuff starts coming into your life as you get older, so you use it." And the exploration doesn’t stop. "I keep trying to find a deeper part of the old bugger."
Hair is not unlike Alastair Sim, the great Scottish character actor who starred in some wonderful British comedies during his long career, but is now chiefly remembered for his definitive portrayal of Scrooge in the 1951 film version. In recent years, Hair’s Scrooge at Theatre Calgary has become such a local cultural icon that many theatergoers may not realize he’s more than a one-trick pony. But this is an actor who has played a wide array of roles in a professional career that spans three decades and close to 250 shows.
In fact, early on, Hair was Calgary’s man of many faces, popping up in diverse parts in just about every other show, at a time when the city’s professional theatre scene consisted only of Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects and Lunchbox Theatre. Back then, he notes, the stable of local actors was small and he quickly cornered the market in character roles. "I was playing 80-year-old men and 20-year-old men and everything in between."
Born in Wolverhampton, England, Hair moved with his parents and older sister to Canada in 1957, when he was six. His mum and dad had wanted to settle in Calgary, but were dissuaded – "The immigration people told them there was nothing out here" – and the family ended up in Montreal. Their early years as immigrants were hard ones. Hair’s father, an electrician, couldn’t find work at first and they lived in a tenement next to a factory in the city’s East End (the rough neighbourhood later immortalized by playwright Michel Tremblay).
"We were very, very poor," recalls Hair, who has Dickensian memories of running wild like an urchin, picking up a knowledge of Québécois French from the streets – an asset he showed off recently in his role as the bilingual Saskatchewan senator in ATP’s Plan B.
The family later relocated to southern Ontario and Hair eventually studied drama at Queen’s University in Kingston. Upon graduating, he took the suggestion of one of his professors and headed west to Calgary to audition for a newly hatched company called Alberta Theatre Projects. Hair made his debut in a little revue called Let’s All Go to the Music Hall and was soon an ATP regular. Within a few years, he was also performing at Theatre Calgary and Lunchbox as well.
Although he spent a couple of years back in Ontario – acting at the Shaw Festival in 1986 and playing a recurring role in the TV series The Campbells in 1987 – Hair has made Western Canada his home ever since. In 1990, he turned to directing and producing as artistic head of the Pleiades Mystery Theatre, taking that company (now known as Vertigo) on the road from community to professional status.
Although he can point proudly to that and other achievements, it’s his performance as Scrooge that has had the biggest impact on the wider Calgary community – and perhaps on Hair as well.
"I get cards and little presents that people leave for me (after the show)," he says. "Cards that say, ‘You’ve become such a part of our family tradition.’" One Carol devotee even burned him a CD of her family’s favourite Christmas songs. "She said that I’ve become a part of their family now, too, so they wanted to share it with me. It was very sweet of them," he recalls, a sudden catch in his voice.
"You get so jaded when you’re an actor. You forget that, once in awhile, you do something that actually reaches an audience and touches them, and makes a difference to them." |
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