A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Charles Dickens’s Christmas classic A Christmas Carol has become more ubiquitous than the story of the Nativity. For many, Christians and non-, the Dickens tale defines whatever goodness Christmas still yields–and more effectively than the gospels’ static tableaux of awestruck shepherds, tribute-laden kings, and hyperactive angels.
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Interestingly, A Christmas Carol borrows from another sacred myth besides Christmas. Like its direct descendant It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s also an Easter story, a story of resurrection. In order to live authentically, Scrooge must die–or taste death. A ferocious medicine, this: how many of us could stomach the sight of our tombstone, let alone a world that barely misses us?
Thanks to Dickens, Scrooge’s resurrection is rooted in a very specific world, ranging from the enduring, threadbare Cratchits to the venal corpse strippers. Over 13 years, the Goodman Theatre has brought that world to an ever fuller life. Rooted in the hard facts of hard times, the most recent adaptation, by Tom Creamer, keeps the spectacle human, democratically distributing its story telling among multiple narrators. (In a swipe at modern puritans, it also informs us that, according to the Victorians’ busybody blue laws, the Cratchits would have had to eat cold goose on Christmas Day because bakers would have been forbidden to cook on religious holidays–and the poor had no kitchens.)
Of course, A Christmas Carol is Goodman Theatre’s cash cow, but hell, compared to Phantom of the Opera it’s purity itself. And patrons are encouraged to drop off canned goods in the “Sharing It” bins in the lobby, for distribution to Chicago’s needy during the holidays and beyond.
The rest of this production follows the original closely, though of course Avenue Theatre cannot muster the resources the Goodman commands. (And after all, it is an amateur theatrical.) Avenue provides one very intriguing moment that the Goodman does not: the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes Scrooge to a graveyard crammed with the bodies of children who have been worked or starved to death. It’s a wrong so evil that even Scrooge feels it.
