A CHRISTMAS CAROL: AN ACTOR'S PERSPECTIVE--PART I

(NOTE:  Zionsville Radio Players is currently in production of an adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel A Christmas Carol.  The script was adapted by co-founder Susan McClelland, was directed by Len Mozzi, rehearsed in Oct. and Nov. and is now being recorded in two sessions at the WICR studios at the University of Indianapolis.  The following was written by actor Dr. Larry Adams, who plays the role of Jacob Marley.  It will be presented in three parts.)

PART I

“A Ghost Story of Christmas.”

That’s what Charles Dickens called it. An odd epithet for an odd story that, one hundred and seventy years later, we take for granted as a holiday classic- and which we all know better as A Christmas Carol.

As I look around the circle of actors tonight, the night of our first read-through rehearsal, I wonder how we can possibly breathe any new life into this old chestnut. The script is good, somehow managing to both condense and flesh out the story and its many characters. The actors, many of whom I’ve shared a staged with in the past, seem first rate. But still: it’s A Christmas Carol. Done and overdone in an endless parade of motion pictures, plays and parodies. What can the fledgling Zionsville Radio Players do, in only their second production, to make it fresh, entertaining- meaningful even- to a listening audience that has seen and heard it all before?

A Christmas Carol truly is an odd story, and oddly titled, being neither a carol nor, beyond the setting, a tale having much of anything to do with Christmas. There is no mention of a stable, shepherds watching their flocks by night, or a virgin birth- not even a Charlie Brown Christmas style reading of the Gospel. Despite his heavily supernatural overlay of ghosts and seemingly miraculous travels through space and time, Dickens presents a thoroughly secularized picture of Christmas in which to work his magic on Scrooge’s heart. Sweetest Day would have worked as well, I think; Halloween certainly better. So what is it that draws us to think of this story as a Christmas classic? Why the almost universal appeal at this time of the year?