Minneapolis Star Tribune Book Review

He Read/She Read

By Karin Winegar and Peter Moore

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

P: Seeing as how the Christmas season is in full cry, we thought it’d be a good idea to take a fresh look at what is arguably one of the best…

K: …or at least one of the most popular…

P: …Christmas stories ever: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

K: Wait. Are we doing this because you happen to be playing Scrooge at a theater in Virginia and this would be a handy, if somewhat weasel-ey, way to promote yourself?

P: Not at all, and I’m shocked- shocked!- you would even think such a thing.

K: Good.

P: Although I do happen to have some of my reviews right here…

K: OK, enough. The fact is A Christmas Carol was a huge hit the instant it was released in 1843…

P: …kind of the Harry Potter of its day, really…

K: …and it continues to be astonishingly popular, with untold adaptations into film, theater, TV specials…

P: I first encountered it when I was a kid in a cartoon version with Mr. Magoo as Scrooge. Interestingly enough, I may have sub-consciously modeled some of my own performance on…

K: A-hem…

P: Sorry. The point is, we all know the story, but maybe not the actual book…

K: …it’s more of a novella, really…

P: …which is too bad, because it’s stunningly beautiful and superbly crafted, with passages that are laugh out loud funny and other parts that are so moving I get choked up just thinking of them.

K: You sentimental old fluff, you.

P: Dickens is beloved, of course, for his highly evocative prose, and Christmas Carol doesn’t disappoint. The warm-hearted Mrs. Fezziwig is described as … “one vast, substantial smile”, and of a bleak and dangerous shop where stolen goods are bought he writes, “ Secrets that few would like to scrutinize were bred and hidden in the mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat and sepulchers of bone.” Wow.

K: This is a story to refresh the spirit and restock the vocabulary: People ‘pelt’ and ‘sally out’, and a broken water main…“sullenly congealed and turned to misanthropic ice.”

P: There’s a beautiful section where the Ghost of Christmas Present carries Scrooge out of London to lonely places where they see miners and lighthouse-keepers and sailors celebrating Christmas: “And every man on board, good or bad, had a kinder word for another on that day. And had remembered those he cared for, and had known that they remembered him.” There are a lot of passages like that that get left out of most adaptations, and you get the pleasure of being surprised by what you thought you knew.
K: What’s so good about it is not just the writing but that it makes you want to be a better person. It’s really a sermon disguised as a ghost story.

P: And a wonderful one at that. Marley’s tortured cry, “Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business!” hits like a thunderbolt, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come is as terrifying as anything in pop culture today. “He beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.” Take that, Freddy Kruger! You know, in our production, when I see the ghost, I turn very quickly and… and…

K:

P: …and continue my review without ever once giving in to the inappropriate but highly understandable impulse to self-aggrandize.

K: So how does a sermon become this enduring ? Why is this a classic, and almost as popular a century and a half later as it was when Dickens wrote it?

P: I think it’s the fact that it’s just a flat-out great story. To watch this “hard and sharp as flint, solitary as an oyster” man find redemption by means of the supernatural and the power of Christmas is thrilling. Scrooge goes through the wringer to get where he ends up, and we all love to see characters learn something and change.

K: Well, we also love James Bond, who doesn’t change anything but his women and his cars.

P: Whole different deal. Bond’s predictability is part of why we do like him- he’s all action instead of emotion.

K: And somehow, “Scrooge. Ebenezer Scrooge” just wouldn’t have the same ring.

P: From the beginning of time, storytelling around the fire is what has nurtured and sustained people.

K: And scared kids into going to bed where they shook with fear all night under the tiger pelt. But we’re so jaded now.

P: Some of you.

K: Some of us.

P: I think something like this cuts through the cynicism of the modern world and the computer age. Love of your fellow man, opening your heart to the joy of Christmas, getting a second chance? That all has great power.

K: I wonder if there’s a modern equivalent, something from our time that will still be around and popular in two hundred years. Lord of the Rings? Star Wars? The Life of Pi?

P: Maybe- those are all great stories. I think if something endures it’s because we can tell each other the story sitting around the fire, even if the fire is virtual.

K: Alright. You’ve been admirable in your self-restraint, so go ahead and tell one-ONE! - anecdote from your experience playing Scrooge.

P: Hmm, so many to choose from… I guess my favorite would have to be the newspaper article that referred to Scrooge’s encounter with the ghost of Bob Marley.

K: Amazing. Well, maybe the ghost of Jacob Marley might be a bit less cranky if he had a reggae feel…

P: “I wear de chains I forged in life, mon!”

K: So- this is a joint rave, then; we have nothing to argue about?

P: Entirely appropriate at Christmastime, don’t you think?

K: I do. Here’s wishing everyone a humbug- free Christmas, and may you remember those you care for…

P: And know that they remember you.

Karin Winegar is a free-lance journalist. Peter Moore is a local actor and director CURRENTLY GETTING RAVE REVIEWS AS SCROOGE IN NORFOLK VIRGINIA!!! Hey, get away from that keyboard! They live in St. Paul. Obviously, they’re married.