McGarry flying solo again for ‘Christmas Carol’ tour

By Rich Fahey

Actor Neil McGarry said he really only has one job as he prepares for his 13th tour of his one-man presentation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” “That’s to get out of the way and let Dickens’s words do the work.”

Performing on a bare stage and accompanied only by his trusty trunk with a few props in it – “The old trunk broke and it’s heavier now” — McGarry will range far and wide performing his award-winning interpretation of the Dickens’ classic.

The tour (full details below) begins Nov. 27-29 in Auburn, N.Y., makes a quick detour West to Arizona for two stops, and then returns to New England for seven more stops, finishing in Hyannis on Dec. 23. In all, he will perform the two-hour show – with a 10-minute intermission – 13 times.

In 2013, McGarry’s performance was named “Best of Boston” by critic Jules Becker and won “Best Solo Performance” from the Independent Reviewers of New England in 2014.

McGarry began his odyssey in 2013, touring Cape Cod and Massachusetts’s South Shore. By 2018 and 2019, “A Christmas Carol” was being seen and warmly received on stages across the European continent, as well as Ireland and the U.K., with performances in Innsbruck, Dublin, London, Bath, Basel, Brunico, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Co. Leitrim, and Prague. Nine different countries in all.

McGarry makes it a point to seek out venues where he feels he can be one with the audience. “It’s always let’s have a conversation and see if I’m a good fit for the space.”

He did six shows in Prague. “There was a language difference but there really wasn’t.”

From 2021 to 2025, McGarry was on the road here at home for five sold-out seasons.

And, in his own way, in this country he has been following in the footsteps of Dickens himself, who gave his first public reading of his classic in the United States at the Tremont Temple in Boston on Dec. 2, 1867.

A balky rotator cuff means McGarry no longer hauls the trunk onstage with him. “(Theater critic) Jack Craib called it carrying a man’s life on his back.”

While Dickens’s work may remain the same – McGarry says he and director Ross MacDonald have added only four words to the original text — McGarry knows “each performance is a living, breathing entity, unique onto itself. It’s all about where the audience is at that time and where I am.”

The preparation that goes into the staging of the work is daunting, especially since he’s working without a net, without backup or an understudy.

There are unplanned moments of great humor, such as the show in Plymouth in 2017 when he started quoting a part that wasn’t actually in the show but is in the book.

Stressful moments have included – but not limited to — driving in blizzards in Maine, crossing borders in Europe not sure whether the trunk would fit on the train or not, breaking his nose in Basel between shows, getting the props through Customs at Heathrow and riding the Tube in London with the trunk while having sliced my hand on it in Victoria Street Station.

The connection with the Arizona stops on the schedule had to do with family in the area and reaching out to theater venues there. The Rogue Theater in Tucson sold out last year and is back on the schedule and he will also do two shows at a performing arts center in Green Valley. “If I could get more shows, I’d play there longer,” he said.

In the early years touring, McGarry benefitted from having actor Erica Simpson on the tour. She served as his stage manager, doing all of the sound effects as well as the very important role of the offstage voice of Belle, Scrooge’s fiancée, who ends their engagement in a most vital scene.

“Originally, I really needed another person besides myself to make it work,” he said. “After two years, Erica, who is a fantastic actor herself, needed to move on to other work and I had to learn to do it on my own:  The sound effects, Belle, all of it. I needed to learn to do it by myself.”

By 2018, and touring Europe for the first time, he had learned to do the voice of Belle, but that didn’t mean Simpson and the offstage voice weren’t missed. “You have to find someone of that skillset, that one person or an actor who can do it. I miss that; it’s a very vital scene and she showed me how it should be played. That became my job, too.”

McGarry has performed in 24 of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, some of them in multiple productions, and they helped teach him about the conversations between actors and their audiences. “They are our scene partners; it’s part of the communal nature of theater and this piece in particular.”

The direction for McGarry’s “Carol” is by Ross MacDonald, at the time the Associate Artistic Director of The Bay Colony Shakespeare Company, a longtime friend, and a great actor in his own right.

“It was Ross’s idea for me to do the show as a solo piece. My parents had died by that time. Ross said, ‘We’ll do it for your dear mum’.”

By 2021, McGarry hadn’t been in the rehearsal room with Ross since 2014 and it became “a joyous reunion with him, a rediscovery of the story and our partnership in it as well as our friendship.”

McGarry entered the session “with some trepidation. I’d been performing ‘A Christmas Carol’ for eight years and was very protective.”

MacDonald and his students at the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School showed real generosity of spirit in helping him find his footing again. “Ross as director had the deftest of touches, almost magical. ‘Try this, try this.’ After the performance with the kids Ross said, “This, this is the production we really set out to do.”

IF everything goes according to plan during the two hours, the result, McGarry said, can be “very cathartic, if Dickens’s words can get the audience to a place where they can feel peace on earth and good will towards men.”

It may be hard to look at what he has chosen to do during the holiday period for lo these many years as a job, but it is a job – a joyous job. “If I have done my job right and gotten out of the way and people have joined me on this journey, then we share the possibility of finding hope and joy. That’s my job.”

ABOUT NEIL MCGARRY A professional actor for over thirty years, Neil McGarry received his training at the National Shakespeare Conservatory and is the founder and former Artistic Director of The Bay Colony Shakespeare Company. Recent work includes “The Weight” (with Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently playing in cinemas; N. Richard Nash’s “The Rainmaker” (Hyannis Arts Hall, Plymouth Center for the Arts, and Glasstown Stage); Noël Coward’s “Private Lives” (Saco River Theatre); “Eine Billion Dollars” and “Miss Fallaci” (as actor Joseph Cotten) for Paramount Plus, streaming on Apple TV; “Masas/Sisters” (“Best Film” and “Best Director” at the Warsaw International Film Festival, and multiple other awards in film festivals across Europe); and “Hill of Vision.” “Sisters” and “Hill of Vision” are currently streaming on Amazon Prime. McGarry has made multiple appearances with the Cape Symphony, Plymouth Philharmonic, and the Fremont Symphony in California. For more information, visit neilmcgarry.com.

The 2026 ‘A Christmas Carol’ tour

Friday, November 27 & 28, 7 pm; Sunday, November 29, 2 p.m. Auburn Public Theatre, Auburn, NY Tickets: advance online $25, at the door $32.

Sunday, December 6, 2 pm. The Rogue Theatre, Tucson, AZ Tickets: $49.

Monday, December 7, 3 and 7 pm Community Performance & Art Center, Green Valley, AZ Tickets: $32

Wednesday, December 9, 7 pm Newton Presbyterian Church, Newton, MA Tickets: TBA

Thursday, December 10, and Saturday, December 12, 2:30 pm Saco River Theatre, Buxton, ME Tickets: $25

Friday, December 11, 7 pm Thacher Hall, Yarmouth Port, MA Tickets: $25

Sunday, December 13, 3 pm Spire Center for Performing Arts, Plymouth, MA Tickets: $29-34

Friday, December 18, 8 pm and Saturday, December 19, 2 pm Vokes Players Theatre, Wayland, MA Tickets: TBA

Sunday, December 20, 3 pm Sandwich Arts Alliance’s Glasstown Stage, Sandwich, MA Tickets: $30 members, $25 non-members

Wednesday, December 23, 7 pm Hyannis Arts Hall, 81 Willow Avenue, Hyannis, MA Tickets: $32-35

For more information, go to neilmcgarry.com