Christmas Carol: A Fairy Tale (NHB Modern Plays) E-Book

Charles Dickens.

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Things are going to be different. Very different... 1838, London. Jacob Marley is dead. And so is Ebenezer Scrooge… In this reinvention of the timeless classic, Ebenezer has died and his sister Fan has inherited his money-lending business. She rapidly becomes notorious as the most monstrous miser ever known, a legendary misanthrope, lonely, and despised by all who cross her path. This year, on Christmas Eve, Fan Scrooge will be haunted by three spirits. They want her to change. But will she? This stage adaptation of Charles Dickens's Christmas tale is by renowned author Piers Torday. Christmas Carol: A Fairy Tale first came to life in the Dickensian environment of the world's oldest-surviving music hall, Wilton's Music Hall, London, in December 2019. It will prove a festive gift for amateur theatre companies seeking an original, female-led version with lashings of goodwill to all men – and women.

Leseprobe

Charles Dickens

CHRISTMAS

CAROL

a fairy tale

adapted for the stage by

Piers Torday

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production

Adapting Christmas Carol - Author’s Note

Characters

Christmas Carol - a fairy tale

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Christmas Carol - a fairy tale was first performed at Wilton’s Music Hall, London, on 29 November 2019, with the following cast:

FAN MARLEY (NÉE SCROOGE)

Sally Dexter

WANT/YOUNG FAN/SID FEZZIWIG, ANN CRATCHIT/GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE/ENSEMBLE

Chisara Agor

IGNORANCE/EBENEZER SCROOGE/FRANK FEZZIWIG/TINY TIM/NEVILLE/JOE/ENSEMBLE

Joseph Hardy

BOB CRATCHIT/BEAU FEZZIWIG/GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT/WILLIAM DORSET/FREDDIE SCROOGE/ENSEMBLE

Edward Harrison

MR BULLABY/PRIEST/SCROOGE’S FATHER/FEZZIWIG/JACOB MARLEY/TOPPER/BILL BULLABY/TURKEY/ENSEMBLE

Brendan Hooper

FREDERICA/FROU-FROU/GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST/FIONA SCROOGE MRS DILBER/GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE/ENSEMBLE

Ruth Ollman

MEAGRE/POLL/CATHERINE FEZZIWIG/AMY DORSET/ALEXA/ENSEMBLE

Yana Penrose

VOICE OF FRANCESCA SCROOGE

Asha Sylvestre

Director

Stephanie Street

Designer

Tom Piper

Lighting Designer

Katharine Williams

Composer and Sound Designer

Ed Lewis

Puppetry Designer

Jo Lakin

Movement and Puppetry Director

Emma Brunton

Casting Director

Gabrielle Dawes

Assistant Director

Josie Lena Davies

Producer

Holly Kendrick

Production Manager

Cath Bates

Stage Manager

Sophie Sierra

Costume Supervisor

Caroline Hughes

Wardrobe Mistress

Kat Day-Smith

Deputy Stage Manager

Emma Dymott

Puppet Maker

Stephanie Elgersma

Marketing and Sales Directors

EMG Marketing and Media Ltd

PR

Borkowski

Adapting Christmas Carol – Author’s Note

When Charles Dickens published his ‘little Christmas book’ in 1843, it took just six weeks for the first adaptation to reach the stage. It played in London for more than forty nights before transferring to New York. In the year of publication alone, there were nine separate theatrical adaptations, including the first-ever musical version. Dickens himself was famous for his own public readings of the story, giving over 127 such recitals in England and America. And the process of retelling has continued for 176 years. From stage to screen, cartoon to musical, from the RSC to the Muppets, there are nearly thirty published adaptations of A Christmas Carol, and dozens more are written every Christmas. There was even a mime version by Marcel Marceau in 1973.

So why another? Well, whilst the tale has been retold for puppets and toys, and Scrooge performed by men young and old, the central role has remained resolutely masculine. What happens when we re-examine this classic fairy tale from a woman’s perspective, and reimagine the complex central character? And why?

The book is, at heart, a story about injustice. Dickens was horrified by the desperate destitution, especially in children, that he witnessed on his many legendary walks through industrial London. He initially drafted a political pamphlet in reply to an 1843 parliamentary report on working-class child poverty. But the Carol made his point more plangently.

Yet he was also no saint. It is perhaps telling that Catherine, his long-suffering wife (who was also a writer), titled her sole publication What Shall We Have for Dinner? She endured twelve pregnancies, bearing him ten children. These took their toll on her body, about which Dickens was privately offensive, and on her mind. Catherine was afflicted by what appears to have been severe post-natal depression, and Dickens responded by first taking up with a young actress, Ellen Ternan, then trying to persuade a doctor that his wife was insane, and should be put away in an asylum so he could continue his philandering unhindered.

Charles Dickens’s daughter Katey said that her father never understood women, and some of his excessively sentimentalised young female characters, like Little Nell in the Old Curiosity Shop, or the long parade of unattractive or damaged older women, such as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, do not offer a very compelling counterargument to this analysis. But he was also a product of his age, a time of unstinting male power that frequently marginalised the voices of the poor, the indebted, the weak, the vulnerable – and women of all classes.

Christmas Carol is set in an intensely patriarchal society. The most powerful member of it, Queen Victoria, may have been a woman, but she also thought her own sex ‘poor and feeble’, and called for suffragists to be whipped. Her female subjects were expected to put ‘home and hearth’ before all else (often including any education and professional advancement). When she married, the rights of a woman were legally given to her husband. He took control of her property, earnings and money. If he wished to spend her money on his business or his debts, he did not require her consent. In exchange for this, she took his name. And until the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, divorce allowing remarriage was only possible by the passage of a private act through the Houses of Parliament.

Early nineteenth-century daughters, like the Fan Scrooge that Dickens imagines, were meant to get in line behind their brothers, like Ebenezer. In Dickens’s version, Fan dies early, leaving Ebenezer distraught.

But what if it had been the other way around? What if Fan Scrooge had tried to make her way in a man’s world of power and profit? What would have happened to Fan then?

Dickens wrote this enduring and uplifting story to try to heal the divisions of his own age. He yearned to create ‘a better common understanding among those whose interests are identical and who depend upon each other’. He wanted, in other words, to bring all people together, at a precious time of year, united in a love of the common good. And so do we. Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one.

Piers TordayNovember 2019

Characters

NARRATORS

MEAGRE, a Dickensian cat

IGNORANCE, a child of the streets

WANT, his sister

THE SCROOGE FAMILY

FAN MARLEY (née SCROOGE), a moneylender

JACOB MARLEY, her late husband

FREDERICA, her niece

NEVILLE, Frederica’s husband

TOPPER, a family friend

FATHER SCROOGE

EBENEZER SCROOGE, her late brother

YOUNG FAN SCROOGE

FIONA SCROOGE, her great-great-great-granddaughter

FRANCESCA SCROOGE, her great-great-great-greatgranddaughter

FREDDIE SCROOGE, her great-great-great-great-nephew

THE CRATCHITS

BOB CRATCHIT, Scrooge’s clerk

MRS ANN CRATCHIT, his wife

TINY TIM, their invalid son

THE SPIRITS

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE

THE FEZZIWIGS

OLD FEZZIWIG, a draper

BEAU FEZZIWIG, his son

CATHERINE FEZZIWIG, Beau’s wife

FRANK and SID FEZZIWIG, their sons

OTHERS

MR BULLABY, an evangelical fundraiser

BILL BULLABY, his 2019 descendant

MRS DILBER, a pawnbroker

JOE, a thief

WILLIAM DORSET, a client of Scrooge’s

AMY DORSET, his daughter

NON-HUMANS

FROU-FROU, a lapdog

POLL, a toy parrot

A TURKEY

ALEXA

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so may differ slightly from the play as performed.

ACT ONE