In the middle of “The Past, a Present Yet to Come,” a theatrical producer listens to playwright Charles Dickens describing the scene of Christmas present familiar to modern audiences. As Dickens describes the Cratchit house and family gathered at their table, the producer’s face shows her progression from evaluating his idea to convinced to completely pulled in — and then skeptical when Dickens gets lost in his vision. 

The audience for ICTRep’s production is on a similar journey.

“The Past, a Present Yet to Come,” a prequel of sorts of “A Christmas Carol,” is up for one weekend only. As artistic director Julie Longhofer shares in her introduction, ICTRep has set this Victorian-era play in an old Victorian hall inside the Southern Hotel at Old Cowtown Museum. Remaining productions are 7:30 p.m. November 14 and 15 with a 2 p.m. matinee November 16. The script, by Matt Schatz, is from 2023.

Fred Frederickson, played by Coleman Adams, is a young husband trying to make a go of his nocturnal millinery company. He seeks out producer and director J.B. Roth, portrayed by Charlene Grinsell, to stage a one-night only performance in his uncle Ebenezer Scrooge’s bedchambers in hopes of inspiring the increasingly cold and cruel man to change. J.B., though fully confident in her own talent and experience, acknowledges she is not a writer. She reluctantly takes Fred to meet Charles Dickens (Mark Schuster), offering many warnings about writers in general and Dickens in particular.

Dickens is a crashing bore.

He gets animated only when he recalls that J.B. has put one of his stories on stage without permission or payment. As the play unfolds, we learn that J.B. admires the words Dickens puts on the page but is put off by his chauvinism and especially his anti-Semitism. As a professional Jewish woman in London, she feels the harm of his prejudice deeply and personally.

Longhofer describes this as a “trunk show,” in which the actors can bring the story to life almost anywhere with a few costume pieces and props. This works beautifully in the hotel’s Turnverein Hall. The audience has plenty of time to get to know each character and be pulled into each performance. 

The script allows Schuster as Dickens the most range, shifting from stammering to eloquent to boisterous. In the small theater, Schuster’s eyes show the audience when he is focused on someone else and when he is inside his own head or his own past. As he moves around the stage, it is not always clear what age or how sober Dickens is meant to be, but it is impossible not to watch. 

Adams lays it on thick when his character, Frederickson, is in sales mode. (J.B. compliments Fred on these moments: “You are too good a salesman to be poor.”) This helps land the moments when he sinks into sincerity. At the show’s beginning, the speed of Adams’s pitch makes some words hard to discern, but this is resolved as Frederickson shifts to a more conversational pace interacting with the other characters.

It is a joy to watch Grinsell, the producer being pitched, listening and responding to her castmates. She is always analyzing, often silently laughing, and sometimes scheming, and the audience sees it all. Grinsell also makes the most of tonal shifts, as when J.B. shows some remorse for casting a play without approval from Dickens and then pulls a comical face.

Director JR Hurst keeps the pace up and the performances exaggerated without becoming too broad. Stan Longhofer’s lighting design creates focus areas for different scenes. Once again, ICTRep makes great use of a less traditional performance space.

What leaves the audience humbuggy is the script. There is plenty of excellent comic writing, and there are attempts to grapple with big themes: the tensions of art vs. commerce; how workers deserve to be treated in factories, offices, and theater troupes; what behavior is justified in pursuit of a goal; and what behavior counts as atonement for anti-Semitism. In service to this, the script has Fred take an abrupt heel turn, and his Christmas Eve redemption is a wan payoff.

Perhaps all prequels have to continue to the point that the works they point to begin, but this one loses steam before Marley is dead.

The Details

ICTRep presents “The Past, a Present Yet to Come”
November 13-16, 2025, Turnverein Hall at Old Cowtown Museum, 1865 Museum Blvd. in Wichita

Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. through November 16 and 2 p.m. November 16.

Seating is limited. Drop-off and accessible parking are available on the grounds Cowtowm Museum near Turnverein Hall at the Southern Hotel.

Adult general admission tickets are $35. Discounted tickets are available for seniors, veterans, people under 30, and students.

Learn more and buy tickets.

Seth Bate’s book “Winfield’s Walnut Valley Festival” was named a 2023 Kansas Notable Book and won the Tihen Book Award from the Kansas State Historical Foundation. In a previous century, Bate was a National Critics Institute fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

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