Critique Of A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol was initially written and published on 19th December 1843, as a novella by Charles Dickens. The story has later been adapted into a play by Romulus Linney with the new adapted version of the play of A Christmas Carol being performed from November 18th to 21th at the Joan C. Edwards Playhouse, by the Marshal Theatre Alliance. The current adapted production is directed by Associate Professor Nicole Perrone, with the leading role of Ebenezer Scrooge played by Professor Jack Cirillo both of whom belong to the Marshall Theatre program. I attended the Friday November 20th performance.

Charles Dickens was a distinguished writer who wished to use the Christmas time theme to “superimposed his humanitarian vision of the holiday upon the public, an idea that has been termed as Charles Dickens’ as ‘Carol Philosophy’” (David, 2008) This concept helps “combined religious and secular attitudes toward to celebration into a humanitarian pattern. It excoriated individual selfishness and extolled the virtues of brotherhood, kindness, and generosity at Christmas.” ( Therefore, Charles Dickens believed that the greatest way to

Furthermore I believe that even though the story was written over a hundred years ago it still has extreme relevance to today’s society. The idea that most people live in self-absorbed and extremely consumerist society with no empathy for those around them is a universally understood problem. The performance of the actors really do still hold true to Dicken’s characters, I found that this representation of A Christmas Carol was quite funny while still holding true to the moral message. The production I believe was successful in carrying out the play, a lot of credit I believe belongs to the strong acting performances and beautiful design of the set and