| A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story | |
|---|---|
 Poster for the cinema release of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story (2022) | |
| Written by | Mark Gatiss |
| Based on | A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens |
| Date premiered | 29 October 2021 |
| Place premiered | Nottingham Playhouse |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | London |
A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story is a play based on the 1843 novella of the same name by Charles Dickens, adapted for the stage by Mark Gatiss.
On Christmas Eve, seven years after the death of his partner Jacob Marley, the solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge receives a visit from the ghost of his former partner. Fettered in heavy chains as a consequence for a lifetime of greed, Marley tells Scrooge that it isn’t too late for Scrooge to save himself from the same fate by changing his ways. To do so, however, he must first face three more ghosts. [1]
| Character | 2021 cast | 2023 cast |
|---|---|---|
| Nottingham & London | Nottingham & London | |
| Ebenezer Scrooge | Nicholas Farrell | Keith Allen |
| Jacob Marley/Old Joe/Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come | Mark Gatiss | Peter Forbes |
| Fred/Young Scrooge | James Backway | |
| Ghost of Christmas Past | Joni Ayton-Kent | Bettrys Jones |
| Ghost of Christmas Present/Fezziwig | Joe Shire | |
| Tiny Tim | Zak Ford-Williams | Ryan Weston |
| Belle | Aoife Gaston | Angelina Chudi |
| Caroline | Angelina Chudi | Leona Allen |
| Narrator/Tim | Christopher Godwin | Geoffrey Beevers |
| Bob Cratchit | Edward Harrison | |
| Mrs Cratchit | Sarah Ridgeway | Rebecca Trehearn |
| Grace Cratchit | Renae Rhodes Esmé Tchoudi | Madison Spencer-Ogiorumua Ava-Jade Wolstenholme |
| Edwin Cratchit | Lauren Tanner Charlie Westlake | William Barker Charlie Westlake |
The adaptation was directed by Adam Penford, designed by Paul Wills with a lighting design by Philip Gladwell, sound design by Ella Wahlström, video design by Nina Dunn, movement direction by Georgina Lamb and composition by Tingying Dong. [2]
The production was originally scheduled to open in 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [3] It was eventually produced at the Nottingham Playhouse from 29 October to 20 November 2021 before transferring to the Alexandra Palace in London where it ran from 26 November 2021 to 9 January 2022 with a cast of 15 playing 50 characters. The production was filmed live for a cinema release during the run at the in London and received a cinema release on the 27th November and 1 December 2022 [4] [3] [5] before it was shown on BBC Four on 25 December 2022. [6]
The production was revived at the Nottingham Playhouse from 28 October to 18 November 2023, before transferring again to the Alexandra Palace from 24 November 2023 to 7 January 2024. It starred Keith Allen as Scrooge with Peter Forbes as Marley. [7]
The production will transfer to the Birmingham Rep for their annual Christmas show from 14 November 2024 until 5 January 2025. Casting is to be announced.
Similar to the Old Vic stage version, a scene is added in which a reformed Scrooge briefly reunites with Belle, the love of his life, who ended their engagement in their youth after he started to become greedy. The two exchange Christmas greetings before Belle parts ways with her family. Throughout the story, an elderly narrator tells the story. When speaking about Scrooge's change and how he came to embody Christmas, he starts to get emotional. The narrator is revealed to be an older Tiny Tim.
Giving the stage show three stars out of five, Arifa Akbar, the critic for The Guardian wrote,
Gatiss's script is surprisingly faithful, given his flair for imaginative reworks of canonical stories (from Dracula to Sherlock), and some dialogue is unchanged along with the words of the narrator (Christopher Godwin). This reminds us of the inherent theatricality in Dickens's storytelling, heightened with the use of puppets and some bewitching surprises such as a delightful cloud of ghosts that suddenly emerge and swing around the auditorium...
Some key moments feel too fleeting and don't carry enough emotion, including Tiny Tim's deathbed scene. But when the human drama slows down, it gains an emotional catch, such as a romantic pause between Belle (Aoife Gaston) and the young Scrooge, and the final scene between Scrooge and Bob Cratchit (Edward Harrison); we wish for a few more of these.
The end brings a clever twist and a great surge in festive feeling, with carol singing and general good cheer. [8]
Mark Brown of The Daily Telegraph was rather more generous, giving the production five stars out of five. He wrote,
"While the production (sub-headed 'A Ghost Story') is utterly, and fabulously, theatrical, Gatiss has, as if in reverence to Dickens's original stage prose presentations, inserted a narrator (played as an all-knowing Cockney by Christopher Godwin). This storyteller enables Gatiss – who also plays the ill-fated ghost of Scrooge's former business partner Jacob Marley – to both dramatise the dialogue of the novella, whilst giving expression to some of the finest passages of Dickens’s prose...
The story that then unfolds is told by a fine cast of no fewer than 15 actors. The improbably versatile set is transformed into the various locations of Scrooge's nocturnal and spiritual journeys with the assistance of top-class video projections and superb stage illusions... ethereal ghosts fly over the heads of the audience by means of the simplest of puppet-making techniques. On the other, some very smart video work gives a spectacular visual dimension to the arrival of Marley's chain-clanking apparition. [9]
Ebenezer Scrooge is a fictional character and the protagonist of Charles Dickens's 1843 short novel, A Christmas Carol. Initially a cold-hearted miser who despises Christmas, his redemption by three spirits has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday in the English-speaking world.
Scrooge is a 1951 British Christmas fantasy drama film and an adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843). It stars Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, and was produced and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, with a screenplay by Noel Langley. It also features Kathleen Harrison, George Cole, Hermione Baddeley, Mervyn Johns, Clifford Mollison, Jack Warner, Ernest Thesiger and Patrick Macnee. Michael Hordern plays Marley's ghost and the older Jacob Marley. Peter Bull narrates portions of Charles Dickens' words at the beginning and end of the film, and appears on-screen as a businessman.
Jacob Marley is a fictional character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Marley has been dead for seven years, and was a former business partner of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge, the novella's protagonist. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance of redemption to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits, in the hope that he will mend his ways; otherwise, he will be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.
Christmas Carol: The Movie is a 2001 British live action/animated film based on Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. Directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, the film features the voices of numerous actors including Simon Callow, Kate Winslet, Kate's sister Beth Winslet, and Nicolas Cage. The film was a critical and commercial failure upon release.
A Christmas Carol is a British-American animated adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella. The film was broadcast on U.S. television by ABC on December 21, 1971, and released theatrically soon after. In 1972, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The film notably has Alastair Sim and Michael Hordern reprising their respective roles as Ebenezer Scrooge and Marley's ghost.
A Christmas Carol is a 1984 British-American made-for-television film adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843). The film was directed by Clive Donner, who had been an editor of the 1951 film Scrooge, and stars George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. It also features Frank Finlay as Marley's ghost, David Warner as Bob Cratchit, Susannah York as Mrs. Cratchit, Angela Pleasence as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Roger Rees as Scrooge's nephew Fred; Rees also narrates portions of Charles Dickens' words at the beginning and end of the film. The movie was filmed in the historic medieval county town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire.
The Ghost of Christmas Past is a fictional character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The Ghost is one of three spirits that appear to miser Ebenezer Scrooge to offer him a chance of redemption.
A Christmas Carol is a 1999 British-American made-for-television film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol that was first televised December 5, 1999, on TNT. It was directed by David Jones and stars Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge and Richard E. Grant as Bob Cratchit.
A Christmas Carol is a 2006 animated Christmas film. It is an adaptation of the 1843 Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol, and was produced by BKN International and BKN New Media, and was the first release in BKN's "BKN Classic Series" anthology of animated direct-to-video films.
Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge is a musical comedy written by Christopher Durang, a parody of the Charles Dickens 1843 novel A Christmas Carol. Durang was commissioned by Pittsburgh City Theatre Artistic Director Tracy Brigden to write a Christmas comedy. The show premiered November 7, 2002 at the City Theatre with Kristine Nielsen in the title role.
A Christmas Carol, the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens (1812–1870), is one of the English author's best-known works. It is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a greedy miser who hates Christmas, but is transformed into a caring, kindly person through the visitations of four ghosts. The classic work has been dramatised and adapted countless times for virtually every medium and performance genre, and new versions appear regularly.
Scrooge is a 1935 British Christmas fantasy film directed by Henry Edwards and starring Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop and Robert Cochran. The film was released by Twickenham Film Studios and has since entered the public domain. It was the first sound film of feature length to adapt the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol, and it was the second cinematic adaptation of the story to use sound, following a now-lost 1928 short subject adaptation of the story. Hicks stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, the skinflint who hates Christmas and is visited by a succession of ghosts on Christmas Eve. Hicks had previously played the role of Scrooge on the stage regularly, starting in 1901, and in a 1913 British silent film version.
A Christmas Carol is a musical with music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and book by Mike Ockrent and Lynn Ahrens. The musical is based on Charles Dickens' 1843 novella of the same name. The show was presented annually at New York City's Theater at Madison Square Garden from December 1, 1994, to December 27, 2003.
Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost is a 1901 British short silent drama film, directed by Walter R. Booth, featuring the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge confronted by Jacob Marley's ghost and given visions of Christmas past, present, and future. It is the earliest film adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella A Christmas Carol.
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A Klingon Christmas Carol is the first play to be performed entirely in Klingon, a constructed language first appearing in the Star Trek media franchise. The play is based on the Charles Dickens 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol. A Klingon Christmas Carol is the Charles Dickens classic tale of ghosts and redemption, adapted to reflect the Klingon values of courage and honor, and then translated into Klingon, performed with English supertitles.
"A Christmas Carol" is the December 23, 1954 episode of the hour-long American television anthology variety series, Shower of Stars. The episode is an adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella of the same name.
Scrooge & Marley is 2012 film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, which is retold from a gay perspective, co-directed by Richard Knight Jr. and Peter Neville, and co-written by Knight, Ellen Stoneking, and Timothy Imse. It also features David Pevsner as Ebenezer "Ben" Scrooge, Tim Kazurinsky as the ghost of Scrooge's business partner Jacob Marley, Ronnie Kroell as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Megan Cavanagh as the Ghost of Christmas Present, David Moretti as Bob Cratchit, and JoJo Baby as the Ghost of Christmas Future. The film adaptation received a mixed critical reception.
The Right to Be Happy is an American silent film from 1916 that draws inspiration from Charles Dickens' 1843 Novella, A Christmas Carol. This film was Universal's first attempt at making a Feature film based on Dickens' novella. Throughout the silent era, it stood as the first and only feature film adaptation of A Christmas Carol by an American or foreign film company. The movie was directed by Rupert Julian and supported by a cast of Universal Bluebird players, including Rupert Julian, Claire McDowell, and Harry Carter.
A Christmas Carol is a 2020 British Christmas drama dance film directed by Jacqui Morris and David Morris and based on Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. It features the voices of Simon Russell Beale, Siân Phillips, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya, Andy Serkis, Martin Freeman and Leslie Caron. It received mixed reviews from critics.