St. Charles actress returns in Goodman's 'Christmas Carol'

St. Charles resident Christine Sherrill, who plays Mrs. Cratchit in the Goodman Theatre's current production of “A Christmas Carol,” cannot remember a time when she did not want to be on the stage.

“I was a theater kid,” she says. “I started when I was very little doing church plays.” And she continued doing theater throughout her teen years at Streamwood High School.

Still, when it came time to choose a major at Northern Illinois University, Sherrill opted to study elementary education because it was a safer career.

“I taught for nine years in Carol Stream,” she says. “I taught everything between first and fourth grade.”

She liked teaching, but she continued to keep one foot in the theater world.

“I was doing non-Equity theater at night,” Sherrill recalls. “I was working at Pheasant Run and trying to swing that and teaching.”

The turning point came when director Marc Robin saw her in a show at Pheasant Run in St. Charles and asked her to audition for a production of “Singing in the Rain” he was putting together at the now-defunct Drury Lane Evergreen Park. Sherrill thought Robin was just “being complimentary,” but she auditioned anyway. She was cast in one of the major roles in the show as Lina Lamont, the nasty silent film star with the screechy voice.

“Marc Robin was the first one to say to me, ‘You should be doing this for a living,'” Sherrill says. “He kind of said he would take me under his wing for a year. Let me see how it went.”

Sherrill was encouraged but nervous. “It was a huge transition,” she says, “to move from something so secure as teaching to acting.”

For a time she continued teaching part time.

“I would teach in the morning and then run to the theater for a matinee and then an evening performance,” Sherrill says. “But after a while even that was too much.”

So she took the leap. “By the end of the first year I turned Equity,” Sherrill says.

Today, less than a decade later, Sherrill is one of a select group of actors who seems never to be not working. Last season she was in Drury Lane Oak Brook's acclaimed production of “Cabaret.” She just finished an extended run in “Million Dollar Quartet.”

And now she's in Goodman Theatre's annual production of “A Christmas Carol,” where she is reprising her role as the long-suffering wife of Scrooge's long-suffering employee Bob Cratchit.

Sherrill admits to being thrilled to be back at the Goodman, in part because, in her words, “they treat us exceptionally well.” She is also happy to be working with director Bill Brown, who first directed her in Drury Lane's production of “Curtains.”

“The amazing thing about Bill Brown is that he knows how to cast,” Sherrill says. “He casts people who are good but also thoughtful and kind. You just feel safe and enthusiastic. And there is so much freedom to explore your character and try things out.”

Which is a good thing because this year the production features a number of new cast members, including a new Scrooge, John Judd, and a new ensemble of kids playing the Cratchit family.

“The scenes all feel different,” Sherrill says. “Their reactions are different. But after a while they begin to feel like my own children.

“The thing is, and this is what Bill Brown wrote the actors in a note, this is everyone's ‘Christmas Carol,'” Sherrill says. “This is what everyone waits for every year. Even though you as an actor might be on the 11th show of the week, there is always joy in the show and there is always hope.”

Ÿ “A Christmas Carol” runs through Dec. 31 in the Goodman's Albert Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, Chicago. Tickets can be purchased at goodmantheatre.org, by phone at (312) 443-3800 or at the theater box office.