“We know that things will work out from the beginning with a narrator who’s genial, really avuncular, a kind of expansive narrator who makes jokes and has a worldview that tells us this is a world in which people are sometimes not kind, but kindness is still the most important thing. “It’s that Scrooge lives in a world in which redemption is still possible,” she said. There’s specificity and individual things about the characters like ‘Bah! Humbug!’ or Fred’s ‘Oh, come now, Uncle’ or Bob Cratchit’s ‘Oh, my dears.’ Those let you know who’s speaking.”Īudiences also respond to the transformation of Scrooge, whom Langbauer describes as an atypical villain, but she also sees a more important theme that resonates with people.
“The sentences are beautifully balanced, the paragraphs flow with great coherence. “Having put 90 minutes or more of it into my mind and mouth on two occasions, I can say that the writing itself is elegant,” Dooley said.
Note version of the christmas carol license#
Magoo version.ĭickens’ writing, while elegant, also imbues the characters with nuances and mannerisms that give actors license to interpret. “You can do most anything with it, and the foundation will support you, and result in some delightful alternatives.”Ĭase in point: one of Dooley’s favorite adaptations is the 1962 animated Mr. “You can paint the house any color you want, but the house is always going to be there,” he said. He compares the plot’s architecture to that of a house built on a strong foundation. Dooley has twice performed a one-man version of “A Christmas Carol” and played roles in larger productions, so he knows the story by heart. The story’s simple structure is key, according to Ray Dooley, a professor emeritus of acting who began phased retirement in 2019 and a member of Carolina’s PlayMakers Repertory Company. “He caught that almost crystalline structure of the fairy tale that makes it easy to grasp but infinitely malleable and important for what it captures about psychology as well as culture,” she said. In trying to revive that tradition, Dickens was keenly aware that he was writing a modern fairy tale, according to Langbauer. “A Christmas Carol” also lives on because it’s a ghost story in the tradition of British tales dating to medieval times. “He caught what were not just particular economic and societal questions during the ‘hungry ’40s’ that persisted during the Victorian era and even now as the Industrial Revolution passes into the Information Age,” she said. Indeed, the cold-hearted Scrooge could just as easily be a 21 st century business tycoon as a 19 th-century miser, and Bob Cratchit’s working-class struggle continues to resonate. Langbauer said that the novella’s lasting power and allure also come from how Dickens wrote, not only brilliantly, but also as a cultural filter.
“Dickens was trying to capture quintessential questions about human fellowship that we’re still concerned with now.”
“It’s persisted because it’s just such a good story by an excellent writer,” Langbauer said. She sees many reasons why “A Christmas Carol” is so malleable and has remained so appealing across decades. Langbauer, a professor of English and comparative literature, gets students to cast fresh eyes on Dickens’ most famous work. But people know it best from movies and plays and can learn more by reading the original slim novella, “A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.”Īt least, that’s what Laurie Langbauer finds when she teaches The British Novel course at Carolina. 19, 1843, is a mainstay of the holiday season. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge, first published on Dec. “Marley’s Ghost.” “Scrooged.” “The Man Who Invented Christmas.” Whether musicals, Muppets or miniseries, adaptations of Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas tale abound.
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