The Goodman’s Albert Theatre holds 856 seats, the balcony pitched steeply so that it feels almost as if the audience is on top of the stage.
Chicago mayors, Illinois governors, U.S. senators and even the occasional Hollywood star have all sat in those seats to watch the theater’s most-loved annual show: “A Christmas Carol.”
One night last week, two of the most demanding, most critical patrons occupied two seats on the floor, right center stage: my children, ages 8 and 14.
So as I waited in the wings for my cue to enter — my first-ever foray into professional theater — I wondered what they (and the 800 or so other people) would make of my cameo.
My heart raced. I felt lightheaded.
Stage manager Duncan McMillan gave me the cue. Take a deep breath — and exhale. Don’t trip! I told myself. Then, I stepped on stage, bellowing in a Cockney accent: “Get yer goose! Get yer goose!”
***
Malkia Stampley directed the show for the first time this year, although she’s been involved with The Goodman since 2022. In Stampley’s “Christmas Carol,” London as a cultural melting pot comes into sharper focus. Her Mrs. Cratchit, Korean American actress Helen Joo Lee, speaks with a hybrid Cockney/Korean accent, occasionally abandoning English altogether for her parents’ native tongue. Mrs. Fezziwig, played by Christiana Clark, speaks with a Nigerian accent.
A djembe drum adds an African flavor to the live music, which also includes a traditional violin and French horn.
“It’s about elevating and evolving and not aggressively or violently trying to change it — that’s not The Goodman’s brand of ‘A Christmas Carol,’” Stampley told me. “We were not going to have ‘A Christmas Carol on Mars.’”
Stampley said she’s nevertheless faced a little pushback, with one person on social media saying, “Oh, I didn’t know 1840s London was that progressive.”
“I don’t need to respond to that because you see what you need to see,” Stampley said. “Because people have been seeing this show for many years, [they] have a lot of opinions about what they wanted me to change, what they wanted me to add.”
One constant most years was the show’s annual cameo by a local celebrity — or it had been until the COVID-19 pandemic. The Goodman hadn’t offered that role to anyone in six years, until I got an email in October from Denise Schneider, who heads the theater’s communications department. She said she liked some of the theater-related stories I’d written for the Chicago Sun-Times. Then, Stampley figured out where to fit me into the show.
But no one at the Goodman knew I harbored a secret desire to be in that very show or that I had just finished a Sun-Times column about how I’d auditioned hundreds of times in Chicago for TV, video and radio — never landing a paid gig.
***
About three weeks before my debut, I arrived at the theater for my costume fitting. The costume shop is in the labyrinthine basement, where pipes snake along the corridor ceilings and L trains rumble unseen overhead.
Heidi McMath is the costume shop manager. She has been at the Goodman for 38 years, including 24 years as costume designer for “A Christmas Carol.”
Isn’t this work a bit like old hat? I suggested.
“Even my colleagues in the building go, ‘This must be the easy one for you,’” McMath said. “But there are 32 people in the cast, and they change, they grow, or they lose weight. Clothes age because we work them hard.”
Through the years, she and her team have fitted a number of celebrities for cameos, including former Chicago Bears star Brian Urlacher and Chicago Bulls great Scottie Pippen.
“He’s very tall, and my draper is very short, and she stood on a high step stool to reach him,” McMath said of the 6-foot-8-inch former NBA star. “We had gotten his tailor to send us measurements because we had nothing in stock. And guess what? His clothes haven’t been worn since.”
I could get used to this attention. There’s nothing like having people flitting around you, asking, “How do you like this one?” Or: “Would you prefer that one?”
When McMath and her team were done, I barely recognized the figure in the mirror, dressed as I was in a chocolate-brown top hat, a topaz silk vest and a mauve wool cape. Not bad for a chap whose great-great-grandfather bred chickens in England.
***
About two weeks before my cameo, I got a severe case of the jitters. All of those people in the audience! What if I freeze on stage or throw up?
Dean Richards, WGN-TV’s entertainment reporter and critic, twice had a cameo in the show.
“Just relax, and have fun,” he advised. “Don’t overthink it. Once you do it, you become part of Chicago holiday history.”
Austin Tichenor, who plays Crumb (a businessman who visits Scrooge on Christmas Eve) and had been the “alternate Scrooge” for three years before that, said: “Spencer Tracy’s advice is always the best: ‘Know your lines, and don’t bump into the furniture.’”
Then, I had little to worry about because surely they weren’t going to give me a line?
I’d been told by those who previously worked at the Goodman that the people there are kind and generous. It’s true.
Tichenor kept popping into the “green room” to say hello and wisecrack; actor Robert Schleifer, who is deaf, signed to “break fingers,” rather than the traditional “break a leg.”
Chris Khoshaba plays, among other parts, a goose seller. Early in the show, he hauls onto stage a rack of geese, handing a particularly emaciated-looking one to Bob Cratchit. I was told that I would go on with Khoshaba. During the 45-minute rehearsal, Khoshaba said to me, “Hey, why don’t you hand it to Cratchit?” Then, he said — gasp! — “How about if you yell, ‘Get yer goose! Get yer goose!’”
Before I knew it, it was time to go on.
“Could I please have Stefano to stage right,” Jennifer Gregory, the production stage manager, announced over the backstage loudspeaker.
Beth Koehler, one of the stage managers, appeared in the green room: “‘That’s us! Let’s head upstairs to places.”
Koehler asked if I was ready.
“I am,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
From the audience, the stage looks small, almost cozy — like the Victorian London it’s supposed to represent. Only when you’re backstage do you realize how vast a space it is — to accommodate the various set pieces and the thicket of ropes used to raise and lower the lights and scenery.
Actors who are about to go on cluster in the shadows, some doing comical dances or repeating the lines they can hear being spoken on stage.
I stood silently in the wings beside Khoshaba, who hoisted the goose rack onto his shoulders.
“Here we go,” he whispered.
Then, out of the shadows and into dazzling light.
***
There I was, plunged into Dickensian England and — call it the spirit of Christmas, if you like — my fears melted away.
Bob Cratchit (Jon Hudson Odom) strolled over. I greeted him warmly and handed him a goose, the skinny one.
Once I was on the stage, I didn’t want to leave. Remember your place, Stefano, you’re a cameo.
Two more appearances in the show followed: I came on stage twice with Clark, including one scene in which I handed one of Clark’s pies (she also plays a pie seller) to Scrooge. Then, the curtain call. Somewhere out there, were my wife Tracy and our boys Lucca and Matteo. The stage lights were so bright, I never saw them.
My family was escorted backstage. I hugged them. The moment of truth: What did Lucca and Matteo think of Dad?
WBEZ’s Justin Bull, working with host Erin Allen on a “Curious City” radio story about the show, asked Lucca. He refused, on teenage principle, to answer any questions.
Microphone in hand, Bull bent down to Matteo, my second-grader.
“What did you think of your dad’s performance?” Bull asked.
“Uh, it was pretty good,” Matteo said.
“Were you proud of him?”
“He was in the show three times — I’m pretty sure.”
Matteo said he doesn’t wish to ever be an actor. He wants to be a professional soccer star.
Later, at home, I asked Matteo again what he thought about Dad. He gushed: “I thought your performance was spectacular, but they should have given you a microphone!”
And, of course, if asked, I would agree to take the stage again faster than you can say, “Bah humbug!”