Creating 'Carol'
Gerald Freedman reflects on his role as adapter and
director of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
"I think Dickens is essentially saying
it is never too later to change — not
only yourself, but the world. One good
deed, if allowed to, can and
will spread through the world."
-Gerald Freedman
GLTF Producing Artistic Director 1985-97
I had never seen A Christmas Carol on stage or film before tackling an adaptation for Great Lakes Theater Festival in 1989. The piece has, however, entered our literary and popular vocabulary as a metaphor for redemption and the possibility of change. So it was with great anticipation that I approached my job.
Our production takes place in a middle-class London home. It is Christmas Eve, 1864, Twenty years after Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. As the Cleaveland family sits down to the traditional reading of the story, the youngest child, a boy, begins to imagine the story that is being told to him. We see the play from his point of view.
Articles from the family home roam freely through Dickens' story and the child's imagination. The family fireplace appears in Scrooge's home; a desk becomes the workplace of Bob Cratchit; Samuels, the butler and also disciplinarian for the boy, becomes Scrooge; and siblings variously appear as other characters.
Dickens called the story a Ghost Story, and we have tried to remain true to this description, while at the same time creating an entertaining piece of theater.
Scrooge is a young man born into poverty who grows up distorted into thinking money is everything. He rejects his spiritual side and his heart becomes small and cold. Through the course of the story, he learns that he can change. The Spirits show him how loving people were in the past, how needy they are in the present, and that the results of his current pattern of behavior are to die alone without family, friends or love.
The three Spirits are each larger than life and haunting for different reasons. I see the Ghost of Christmas Past as benevolent: Scrooge first does not want to deal with the past, which serves as a painful reminder of what he has lost, but it is familiar and potentially warm.
The Spirit of Christmas Present is huge and expansive, as he embodies the entire world with everyone's thought and feelings on Christmas Day. The most daunting of the three is the Spirit of Christmas Future. He is connected to the unknown and therefore represents the greatest threat.
I think Dickens is essentially saying it is never too later to change -- not only yourself, but the world. One good deed, if allowed to, can and will spread through the world. The obstacles to the growth of a giving spirit are Ignorance and Want. As the poet Santanyana said, "Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it." It is this ignorance of the past and present which holds our downfall. Likewise, want of proper food and housing beget people who can't function properly.
In A Christmas Carol, Dickens decries materialism in favor of generosity and social responsibility. The enduring popularity of the story is grounded in his faith in the idea of change. Dickens portrays the obstacle to change as the paralyzing fear of giving up something and being somehow diminished in the process.
In the end, Scrooge risks squandering his money to provide for the welfare of others, and risks opening his heart and giving of his love, which makes him vulnerable to hurt, but which paves the way for his redemption.
Gerald Freedman
Gerald Freedman, former GLTF artistic director, is the Dean of the School of Drama at North Carolina School of the Arts.