Fairfax Station — Nationally known John Hardy will be performing his one-actor adaption of Charles Dickens’ iconic “A Christmas Carol” at the Workhouse Arts Center. The production features Hardy playing over forty characters that are true to the Dickens book. Hardy has a thirty-five year career both acting and as a playwright in professional theater.

The play follows the book, scene by scene. “It is a loyal adaptation of the book,” said Hardy. “’A Christmas Carol” is one of the best known stories in the world and I wanted to retain, as much as possible, the essence of the book in its original form.

Hardy also said that, “even though it is the same story as the book, the experience of actually watching an actor move through the events of a play is vastly different than simply hearing the story or reading the book. I get entirely caught up in the story as I am doing the play, and the audience goes right along with me.”

Hardy never leaves the stage and the audiences’ eyes and ears as he performs in “A Christmas Carol.” Each of the forty characters will have their own distinct accents, speech patterns and physical traits.

According to Joseph Wallen, director, Workhouse Performing Arts, the Workhouse worked with the Virginia Commission for the Arts (VCA) to bring “A Christmas Carol” to Workhouse audiences. “We are thrilled to invite John Hardy to our stage and know that this will be a magical experience for families in our neighborhood.”

“Charles Dickens' ‘A Christmas Carol’ is firmly embedded in our collective as a story of a question of personal loss and redemption that transcends any singular faith. When we discovered John Hardy's one-man adaptation of this classic story, we learned that it harkens back to Charles Dickens' own public readings, who performed his own text in London a century or so ago, wherein the author himself read and played all of the roles, it seemed a natural fit.

“While our own Workhouse campus has its own roots in history, and we look forward to transporting families to Victorian London to experience what it might have been like to attend one of Charles Dickens' original experiencea,” added Wallen.

Inviting audiences to the performance, Hardy noted that “even if an audience member has seen a previous production of ‘A Christmas Carol,’ they have not seen it done like this.” It is all to celebrate the spirit of Christmas.