Richard Hellesen wrote the adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” that opens tonight at the Denver Center Theatre Company. It is the first time in 16 years the company is not presenting the version written by Dennis Powers and Laird Williamson.
The true power of a classic is that it speaks to us, through time, of our time. In creating this version of “A Christmas Carol,” we returned constantly to the Charles Dickens source novel, only to find absent some things that years of sentimentalizing have tacked on to the story, and to rediscover things that are sometimes neglected or ignored in the theater.
That Ebenezer Scrooge is an enduring, if unlikely, icon of Christmas is clear in that his very name has entered our lexicon. To be “a Scrooge” is to be “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” He is a person unable to enjoy a celebration or allow others to enjoy it. He is utterly reprehensible and irredeemable.
But “A Christmas Carol” is a tale of redemption and salvation, one achieved through memory of the past, sympathy with the present and a frightening vision of the future.
We like to believe that we are all Bob Cratchit – overworked, underpaid and put upon. Dickens has a greater challenge for us: As often as not, we are Scrooge. So we must both observe him and take his part.
Yet in spite of Dickens’ blustering description of Scrooge, the hopeful fact of “A Christmas Carol,” remains: Scrooge is redeemed because he can be. He is a sour old man, but he also has a sense of humor, however dark and cynical. It means that he has the potential for joy – and as the first spirit arrives, bringing old places, old loves, old friends, old selves, Scrooge begins to be moved. Were he truly irredeemable, none of this would affect him. But it does affect him – powerfully.
The fire is not lit in Scrooge by a team of ghostly strongmen with piles of fuel and great amounts of heat. Rather, it is rekindled from the almost-dead log of his own soul, with some gentle blowing and the occasional jab from a poker. His triumph in the end, having endured his haunting, is to truly see the world in all its richness and joy, in the bright light of Christmas – ready to put his newfound good feeling to work.
May that truly be said of all of us. Joy and plenty for one and all.
