A Christmas Carol (play)

A Christmas Carol
Written by	Charles Dickens Adapted by Patrick Stewart
Date premiered	1987
Place premiered	Mirfield, West Yorkshire
Original language	English
Genre	Drama/Monodrama

A Christmas Carol is a one-man stage performance by English actor Patrick Stewart of the Charles Dickens novel of the same title, which has been performed in the United Kingdom and the United States on occasion since 1988.

Stewart was originally inspired to create the adaptation during the production of the 1986 film Lady Jane. It is performed without costumes or props, and has Stewart playing more than 30 characters. Critics have praised Stewart's portrayal and compared them to the readings performed by Dickens during the 19th century.

A Christmas Carol is a novella by English writer Charles Dickens, first published in on 19 December 1843. It has been adapted into a variety of mediums, with the first theater production taking place in London within six weeks of publication. The run lasted for 40 nights before transferring to the Park Theatre in New York City. In 1853, Dickens began to perform the story itself in public, performing each of the characters himself without props or costume changes. He continued to make these occasional recitals until his final public performance on 15 March 1870.

Patrick Stewart first became influenced by the story during the production of his 1986 film Lady Jane. In a break between filming, he discovered that he had read all the newspapers and magazines he had available in his hotel. However, it had a small library available to guests. Stewart picked up an old copy of A Christmas Carol, having realised that while he was familiar with the story, he had never read it. He compared the major theme of redemption in the story to those he had previously seen in the works of William Shakespeare.

Stewart began developing an adaptation of the story to be performed in a one-man show. The then-three hour performance was only performed in public at the parish church in Mirfield, West Yorkshire in support of their church organ restoration. It wasn't until during the production of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation two years later that Stewart began to work on re-developing it into a shorter but still full-length solo performance. He took his work to Professor Albert Hutter, a Dickens scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, for reassurance that he hadn't made any mistakes in his adaptation. His first performance was in Hutter's home in front of around 18 people, and he found the response encouraging.

...
Wikipedia