The Business of ‘Carol’
IT’S DECEMBER, WHICH MEANS IT’S TIME FOR Amy Herzberg’s stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol. And Patrick Mullins’s version. And Michael Wilson’s take on the tale. And, well, too many others to mention. Charles Dickens’s story has long been The Nutcracker of U.S. regional theatres; in the past, in the present, and for holiday seasons yet to come it has been and will be performed to packed houses in red states, blue states, big cities, small towns, and theatres of all shapes and sizes. (This year it’ll even be on Broadway.) It has been performed in traditional Victorian sets, in a 1920s speakeasy setting, and in modern dress; as a one-man show, as a fully cast play, and as a musical.
“It’s the greatest story ever written about forgiveness and the transformational impact we have on the world around us, for good and for bad,” says Geoff Elliott, who adapted the story for A Noise Within (ANW), the Pasadena, Calif.- based theatre he runs with his wife, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott.
“It goes to something fundamental, a philosophical and spiritual question that daily life distracts us from—what is it all for, what do I want to leave behind,” says Charles McMahon, artistic director of the Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia, which is staging a one-man version. “The genius of Dickens’s story is it makes the stakes immediate and clear.”
Also immediate and clear from the start: the tale’s theatrical potential. The first authorized theatrical version hit the London stage in 1844, just months after the novella was published, and that February, London had eight rival versions playing. Dickens himself did more than 100 live readings, many during his 1867-68 tour of America. And it has also been adapted endlessly in every medium, from a silent film version in 1901 to a Marcel Marceau has become a big, even crucial seasonal theatre business.
