A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story

On Christmas Eve, seven years after the death of his partner Jacob Marley (Mark Gatiss), the solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge (Nicholas Farrell) receives a visit from the ghost of his former partner. Fettered in heavy chains as a consequence for a lifetime of greed, Marley tells Scrooge that it isn’t too late for Scrooge to save himself from the same fate by changing his ways. To do so, however, he must first face three more ghosts.[6]

Mark Gatiss adapted the drama and appeared in it as Jacob Marley, among other roles

• Mark Gatiss as Jacob Marley/Old Joe/Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
• Nicholas Farrell as Ebenezer Scrooge
• James Backway as Fred/Young Scrooge
• Jo Eaton-Kent as the Ghost of Christmas Past
• Joe Shire as the Ghost of Christmas Present/Fezziwig
• Zak Ford-Williams as Tiny Tim
• Aoife Gaston as Belle
• Angelina Chudi as Caroline
• Christopher Godwin as the Narrator/Tim
• Edward Harrison as Bob Cratchit
• Sarah Ridgeway as Mrs Cratchit
• Renae Rhodes as child
• Lauren Tanner as child
• Esme Tchoudi as child
• Charlie Westlake as child[4][7]

Nottingham Playhouse by night

The drama was directed by Nottingham Playhouse's artistic director Adam Penford, while the production was designed by Paul Wills with a lighting design by Philip Gladwell, sound design by Ella Wahlström, video design by Nina Dunn, movement direction by Georgina Lamb and composition by Tingying Dong.[8]

Giving the stage show three stars out of five, Arifa Akbar, the critic for The Guardian wrote,

Gatiss's script is surprisingly faithful, given his flair for imaginative reworks of canonical stories (from Dracula to Sherlock), and some dialogue is unchanged along with the words of the narrator (Christopher Godwin). This reminds us of the inherent theatricality in Dickens's storytelling, heightened with the use of puppets and some bewitching surprises such as a delightful cloud of ghosts that suddenly emerge and swing around the auditorium...

Some key moments feel too fleeting and don't carry enough emotion, including Tiny Tim's deathbed scene. But when the human drama slows down, it gains an emotional catch, such as a romantic pause between Belle (Aoife Gaston) and the young Scrooge, and the final scene between Scrooge and Bob Cratchit (Edward Harrison); we wish for a few more of these.

The end brings a clever twist and a great surge in festive feeling, with carol singing and general good cheer.[9]

Mark Brown of The Daily Telegraph was rather more generous, giving the production five stars out of five. He wrote,

"While the production (sub-headed 'A Ghost Story') is utterly, and fabulously, theatrical, Gatiss has, as if in reverence to Dickens's original stage prose presentations, inserted a narrator (played as an all-knowing Cockney by Christopher Godwin). This storyteller enables Gatiss – who also plays the ill-fated ghost of Scrooge's former business partner Jacob Marley – to both dramatise the dialogue of the novella, whilst giving expression to some of the finest passages of Dickens’s prose...

The story that then unfolds is told by a fine cast of no fewer than 15 actors. The improbably versatile set is transformed into the various locations of Scrooge's nocturnal and spiritual journeys with the assistance of top-class video projections and superb stage illusions... ethereal ghosts fly over the heads of the audience by means of the simplest of puppet-making techniques. On the other, some very smart video work gives a spectacular visual dimension to the arrival of Marley's chain-clanking apparition.[10]

• Adaptations of A Christmas Carol