For your consideration...

Now that we’re safely past Christmas Day, I think I should strike while the iron is hot, so to speak, and make you aware of yet another adaptation of Charles Dickens’s immortal classic yadda yadda yadda. Actually, two adaptations, etc., but more about that in a moment.

2015’s Tiny Tim (Ryan Reeves) with 1980’s TT (Jonathan Hickman)

Forty years ago, I was the self-proclaimed artistic director of Newnan Community Theatre Company (known now as Newnan Theatre Company). This was our sixth year in full swing, and we were producing more and more shows each year. Someone, I don’t remember whom, suggested that we needed a Christmas show, our very own personal Nutcracker to rake in the good will and ticket sales.

It was decided that I would turn Christmas Carol into a musical. This was in June or August, and I had to cannibalize a great deal of the material from earlier efforts. (And other sources: the opening phrase of “A Reason for Laughter” is stolen straight from Figaro’s “Signori, di fuori” entrance at the end of Act II of Marriage of Figaro.)

Still, I got it done: twenty pieces of music from Opening to Finale (the Overture came later), set for piano, cello, and glockenspiel. It was a huge hit, people left the theatre humming the tunes, and everyone wanted to see it every year, the end.

You can skip this part if you like.

It became a sturdy tradition, with children entering the pipeline as Ignorance or a Cratchit, graduating up to Party Guest and eventually to Bob Cratchit or Belle. Our inventions over the years for the Ghosts were many: a double-decker Present (parodied so effectively in Farndale Avenue’s version); a Marley who rigged his rock-climbing gear so that when Scrooge invited him to sit, he did so in mid-air; the same Marley whose “Look to see me no more!” had him fling himself into space and exit through the in-the-round audience, borne aloft by strong young cast members; massive rod puppet Futures.

We built up a huge collection of costumes and props, so that the show got easier and easier every year. The piano accompaniment gave way to synthesized orchestra (with the new Overture!) Everyone already knew the music, mostly, and so we could slam together a Christmas Carol in the three weeks that the college kids came home and resumed their places.

Eventually of course we got tired of it—the backstage joke was “Die, you little cripple, die!”—and we began to alternate CC with other Christmas-themed shows. Then, when I retired as artistic director in 2002 (with my translation of Figaro), the company lost interest.

Until 2013, when NTC asked if they could revive the show. Of course, I replied, but the software that ran the synthesizer is long dead. I will have to rebuild the score—can we do a small live ensemble? Sure, they said, and so I set to work.

2015

Without being too unkind about it, NTC could not pull together the live ensemble and so fell back on the practice mp3s I had made them, which made it very difficult for the singers. Anything that vamped (like half the Finale) was just cut. The set was overbuilt (poor Scrooge had to retreat backwards up a flight of stairs to his bed when fleeing G. of C. Past). The show just fell apart. (It didn’t seem to matter; audiences were glad to see it again.)

So naturally I volunteered to take the helm for 2015. I reconstructed the score again, this time for synth orchestra, and away we went! It clicked on all cylinders, even with having to rebuild all the costumes at the last minute. (See pp. 110–111 in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.)

Start reading again here.

Having reintroduced the show into the company’s consciousness, I was looking forward to directing it again in 2016 to consolidate our gains. You may imagine my shock when I had only three or four adults and a flock of little girls show up for auditions.

In the old days, I’d get on the phone and bully people into joining the cast, but I was not in the mood. So I did what any self-respecting diva would do: I rewrote the script instead.

Now we had a frame story—yes, I know we all hate frame stories—wherein a spoiled little rich girl is hosting a sleepover for her birthday. She’s mean to the daughter of her mother’s personal assistant, and there’s a spat. The grandfather intervenes, offers to tell them a story. The girl demands a ghost story, and Grandfather obliges: “Marley was dead.”

2016

From the shadows emerge a handful of figures, and we’re off. The girls go from listening to Grandfather to observing the story to being a part of the story to narrating the end—they’ve been initiated into humankind’s greatest gift, that of story-telling.

Anyway, I can offer you two versions of Charles Dickens’s heart-warming story of terrorizing the rich until they share: a traditional, straight version; and the “sleepover” version when you have too many little girls and just can’t face Annie again.

You can find it all here.

P.S. The Finale is by far the best ending to CC you will ever find.