A Christmas Carol

Familiar? No? How about this: “Doomed, Scrooge! You’re doomed for all time! Your future is a horror story, written by your crime!”

Yes, ’tis the season for gravy and graves, and Belvoir has stepped up to the plate with one of the classics of seasonal theatre. Yet of the above quotes, only one is taken from the source. The second hails from The Muppet Christmas Carol, and is almost certainly the more familiar for a generation raised with a knowledge of Dickens’ name, if not his actual writing. As Belvoir resident director Anne-Louise Sarks describes it, there is quite a gulf between what we remember, and what we actually know.

“I think the truth is that people don’t actually know this story all that well,” Sarks says. “When I went back to the book I thought I knew what the story was, and I was quite surprised at how dark it was, how complex. I think people have a sense of what this story is, and I think that’s potentially as a result of versions like The Muppets’, as a result of the condensed, simple archetypes that have come out of this story.”

Reinventing a tale that so many feel they are familiar with is a unique endeavour. The language of Dickens is unmistakably evocative, but certainly far from contemporary phrasing. Additionally, there is the element of surprise (not bad for a story that first appeared in 1843) when faced with an audience which only thinks it knows what to expect. Having recently wrapped her season directing Nora, Sarks also isn’t shy of taking on vintage texts. “I’m not afraid of taking on classics,” she explains, “but the thing here is that it’s a very different challenge. It’s a novella, and so has to be reimagined in order to be brought to the stage. I wanted to create a work that spoke to an audience in a way the book spoke to me, and what really struck me about this play weren’t the things I thought I already knew – things like Scrooge being a miser, the magic of the spirits – but the very deep, rich emotional journey that is at the core, this incredible story about a man who has nothing but remorse for every decision that accumulated to make him who he is, and who wants desperately to change his life. I thought that would be a very beautiful thing to bring to the stage, and starts to touch on why it is we come together at this time of year and what that might mean.”

It is also interesting to note how the original novella had its genesis. Were it not for a belief in the basic kindness of people – and a keen understanding of how society is shaped by its entertainment – A Christmas Carol may have been a markedly different beast.

“The story is, instead of A Christmas Carol, Dickens was going to write a political pamphlet about social injustice, about the poor during Christmas, until he realised that there was a much more powerful way to engage people and to tell this story. To create change, he understood that empathy was necessary. So he wrote this book, believing in the power of art, and I don’t think most people have any idea that that’s what is really behind it. It’s something that doesn’t have much to do with it being a big classic. It’s just a story that really moves you that you want to share.”