{"id":73528,"date":"2025-12-06T11:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T11:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/73528\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T11:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T11:35:09","slug":"for-centennial-finale-st-pete-city-theatre-recreates-its-own-1940s-christmas-carol-wsun-broadcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/73528\/","title":{"rendered":"For centennial finale, St. Pete City Theatre recreates its own 1940s ‘Christmas Carol’ WSUN broadcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AA vintage cast photo of St. Petersburg City Theatre\u2019s 1940s cast of \u2018A Christmas Carol.\u2019 Credit: c\/o St. Petersburg City Theatre<\/p>\n

For the finale of its 100th anniversary season, St. Petersburg City Theatre<\/a>\u2014one of the oldest continuously operating community theaters in Florida\u2014is dipping back into its past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Dec. 22,1940, the company performed \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d on WSUN, the radio station that was situated on what is now the St. Pete Pier<\/a>. For the 2025 production, Board President Stefanie Lehmann wrote an adaptation that re-creates that radio broadcast for the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Radio adaptations of holiday favorites have become a staple of late. TampaRep staged an excellent \u201cIt\u2019s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play\u201d in 2024, and the company hopes to make magic at the mics again this year with Jim Sorensen\u2019s adaptation of \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d which, like SPCT\u2019s, will be set in a radio station in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

At both Tampa Repertory Theatre<\/a> and SPCT, the radio actors will step up to the mics to play the Dickens characters, and there\u2019ll be live sound effects and faux ads with made-up jingles. But where the six-member cast at TampaRep will play what Sorensen calls \u201cexaggerated versions of themselves,\u201d the 16 actors at SPCT (full disclosure: I\u2019m one of them) are portraying people who were part of the troupe at the time of that WSUN broadcast 85 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u201840s sections are all based on real people,\u201d Lehmann told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, \u201cand in most cases on real stories or quotes that I found in our archives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lehmann\u2019s mother, long-time SPCT board member Stacie Lehmann, organized the theater\u2019s massive repository of newspaper articles and documents during the pandemic. When Stefanie looked through them, she stumbled upon items related to the 1940 \u201cChristmas Carol\u201d radio show performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cParticularly during the war years, a lot happened very quickly at our theater between 1940-1943,\u201d said Lehmann, \u201cbut I needed to fold events from across those months into a single Christmas Eve broadcast. I landed on December 1942 because it seemed to be the collision point of a lot of these inspiring stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the top of the 1942 show as imagined in Lehmann\u2019s script, company members carry on props for the sound man, look over their scripts, and trade news about the war. I play Captain Patrick Walters, a British expatriate who\u2019s directing the broadcast. I learned from Lehmann\u2019s research that Walters was a Royal Marines veteran who moved to Florida in the \u201830s, where he was hired to lead what was then called the St. Petersburg Little Theater. (The theater changed its name from \u201cLittle\u201d to \u201cCity\u201d in 2010.)<\/p>\n

Several cast members augmented Lehmann\u2019s findings with their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe 2025 cast of St. Petersburg City Theatre\u2019s \u2018A Christmas Carol.\u2019 Credit: David Warner \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\n

Local theater favorite Velda Gauthier discovered that Cafe Clementine at the Museum of Fine Arts<\/a> was named after her character, Clementine Japour, who co-owned a popular boutique on Beach Drive and served as the Little Theater\u2019s president at one time. Clem\u2019s turns at the mic include the role of a saucy charwoman.<\/p>\n

Erin Kennedy plays Japour\u2019s sister, Beth McNeely, who was co-owner of the boutique and, says Kennedy, \u201ca local fashion icon.\u201d The script has McNeely arrive for \u201cChristmas Carol\u201d decked out in full Dickensian garb\u2014even though it\u2019s a radio show. Kennedy, who did the costumes for \u201cSister Act\u201d earlier this year, says, \u201cIt is most fitting that my debut line on this stage is \u2018Theater begins in the cloakroom!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Her two sons\u2014Clark, 10, and Clifton, 9\u2014are also in the cast, and appeared in SPCT\u2019s 2023 adaptation of \u201cCarol.\u201d (The theater has done at least 12 in-person adaptations of the Dickens story over its 100 years.)<\/p>\n

Bill DeYoung, arts reporter for the St. Pete Catalyst, plays Frank Joyner, the company member assigned to play Scrooge.\u00a0 Joyner\u2019s wife, Frances, played by Laura Banks, suggests that Walters typecast him as the \u201csqueezing, grasping\u201d miser, but by all accounts Frank was generous in his support of the Little Theater both on and offstage, as was she. DeYoung came to \u201cCarol\u201d equipped with experience as an actor in local theater and a repertory company in Savannah, Georgia. He also brought his own well of background knowledge about SPCT; he played the Ghost of Christmas Present in 2017 and wrote a comprehensive history of the theater<\/a> for the Catalyst in 2021.<\/p>\n

\"AnCredit: c\/o St. Petersburg City Theatre<\/p>\n

As is often true with community theaters in which everyone involved is a volunteer, there\u2019s a \u201ccome one, come all\u201d vibe at SPCT, an ethos which has guided the Little Theater movement since its inception in the 1920s. Accordingly, there\u2019s a wide variety of experience, theatrical and otherwise, in the cast and crew of \u201cCarol.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Banks, who moved to Gulfport from New York City only about a year ago, has done improv with Whoopi Goldberg in L.A., performed a one-woman Off-Broadway show, and appeared in\u00a0 \u201cStar Trek: The Wrath of Khan.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don Speirs, a retired military veteran, plays WSUN program director George Bartlett, who voices Bob Cratchit and old Fezziwig. He learned from an online biography that Bartlett wrote for the St. Petersburg Times for several years; another cast member unearthed the info that Bartlett was also an accomplished painter and a professional banjo player. This is only Speirs\u2019 second appearance with SPCT, but he\u2019s been acting for five decades, from touring in musicals to a three-year stint as the Seattle Seahawks\u2019 Santa Claus.<\/p>\n

Richard Isaacs, a young IT retiree, plays Tom Howell, a Seabee on medical leave who takes the role of Young Scrooge; a Louisville native, he\u2019s been involved in community theater for 30 years, and has done two previous shows with SPCT. Mike Nower, the director, also retired from an IT career; he and his wife, Sara, spend half the year in Gulfport and half in the UK, where they both are active in community theater. He played Scrooge in SPCT\u2019s 2016 \u201cCarol,\u201d but this production will be his first time directing for the theater\u2019s mainstage. His wife, Sara, plays a WSUN employee and the narrator of \u201cCarol\u201d; she\u2019s been seen in starring roles at The Off-Central. (Both try valiantly to correct our not-always spot-on English accents.)<\/p>\n

Some in the cast, like Banks, Kennedy and myself, are first-timers on the SPCT stage. That\u2019s the case, too, with Samantha Lee, a veterinary technician who\u2019s playing company member Betty Voorhees and the Ghost of Christmas Past. Others are long-time denizens. Stan Gurvitz, a self-described \u201chandyman on the cusp of retirement,\u201d plays company member Howard Weston and grizzled Old Joe and has been doing shows at SPCT for 10 years, including five productions of \u201cChristmas Carol.\u201d Stage manager Donna McCall-Thibodeau, a customer retention agent for USPS, has the record in our group, it seems; she\u2019s been doing shows at SPCT since 1986.<\/p>\n

Many of the company members remark on the family feeling at the theater.<\/p>\n

Lehmann, 34, is a case in point. The associate general manager for performance and campus operations at NYC\u2019s Lincoln Center, she started working remotely from Florida during COVID and has continued to do so ever since. She and her mother were among the many SPCT members who banded together to ensure the theater\u2019s survival through a series of recent crises: a financial shortfall in 2017, the pandemic in 2020, and last year\u2019s two devastating hurricanes, one of which blew the theater\u2019s new roof off just after it had been installed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Little Theater was fraught with cares in 1942, too. Wartime pressures loom in Lehmann\u2019s script. Gas rationing is on the horizon, threatening to reduce audience attendance just as the company is about to move into a new building. As we learn later in the broadcast, at least one company member has lost his life on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

But, as Captain Walters states, \u201cOur little theater is nothing if not resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n

True then, and true now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Christmas Eve 1942 felt like a moment where the community could come together and take a moment to stop and breathe together, to reflect on the past years\u2019 victories and losses, and to reaffirm their values and purpose as they look toward the future,\u201d said Lehmann. \u201cAs we enter this next century, I hope we do much the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ACaptain Patrick Walters. Credit: c\/o St. Petersburg City Theatre<\/p>\n

If you go see \u2018A Christmas Carol\u2019 at St. Petersburg City Theatre<\/p>\n

Tickets for \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d showing select nights Dec. 12-21 at St. Petersburg City Theatre are still available for $10-$23.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

This article appears in Nov. 27 \u2013 Dec. 03, 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

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