“First, it is about redemption,” she said. According to Rachel Kavanaugh, who is directing Edmondson in a revival of the acclaimed David Edgar adaptation at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, there are two key elements to the story’s enduring attraction. The biting truth is that Dickens’s twin starving children, Ignorance and Want, are in stark evidence this year. So with a cornucopia of shows to select from, what is hidden beneath the fur-trimmed cloak of such a vision of plenty? The Ghost of Christmas Present points grimly to the pertinence of the plot. Thorne’s hit version, which has starred Rhys Ifans, followed by Stephen Tompkinson, Paterson Joseph, Andrew Lincoln and Stephen Mangan, is back this year with Teale in the role.
Each attempted to sound more of the original notes of a familiar tune. Newer stage versions have come from writer Patrick Barlow, who cast Jim Broadbent as his Scrooge, from Mark Gatiss last year and from Jack Thorne at London’s Old Vic. skip past newsletter promotionĪ scene from Netflix’s new animated feature Scrooge: A Christmas Carol. Of late, things have taken a more serious turn, with a darkly faithful 3D animation voiced by Jim Carrey in 2009 and a shadowy BBC adaptation in 2019 from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight starring Guy Pearce. In the 20th century we then had memorable screen Ebenezers, from Alastair Sim and a singing Albert Finney to Bill Murray in Scrooged and Michael Caine appearing with the Muppets. In fact, it had sold out by Christmas Eve just days after it was first published in December 1843. Taking one spectral visitation at a time, a trip with the Ghost of Christmas Past reveals just how this book has towered over Dickens’s other seasonal efforts for almost 180 years. “I have a whole cast around me doing a Christmas show and I am being the anti-matter, the heckler.”įor audiences, all these shows mean a chance to revisit a story that still chimes loudly, and to see whether, as many suspect, it will have a more chilling resonance in the winter of 2022.
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The part, he added, is surprisingly tough to play, since he needs to be the grumpy centre of a full Mr Fezziwig-style display of whirling fun. The character has loomed large for Teale since he first read the story as child in Wales: “Scrooge is such a closed person, hating the world before it hates him and ready for a fight.” Speaking before a dress rehearsal on Friday, Teale said he’s focusing on keeping his Scrooge “honest”. At the Rose theatre in Kingston, south-west London, a woman, Penny Layden, will play the role. Or perhaps it will go to a relative unknown at a smaller venue, such as the Peckham theatre in south-east London, where a new musical, Scroogelicious, opensin December.Īny actor who can snarl convincingly through the line: “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry” stands a chance. Will the victor’s nightcap go to a big star in a successful returning production, such as Simon Russell Beale at the Bridge theatre in south-east London, Adrian Edmondson at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, or Owen Teale at London’s Old Vic? Adrian Edmondson in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s A Christmas Carol at Stratford-upon-Avon.
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