This festive season, experience A Christmas Carol as never before. A brand-new adaptation by Mark Gatiss (Dracula, The League of Gentlemen, Sherlock) gives particular focus to the story's supernatural roots - a perfect addition to the atmospheric Alexandra Palace.
Christmas has come early this year! Before its opening at the Alexandra Palace in December, an all-new version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol will premiere at the Nottingham Playhouse. Adapted by Mark Gatiss (who will also be performing the role of Jacob Marley), the production promises to be a chilling evening of theatre.
That Dickens’ ghost story has come to acquire literary immortality is perfectly ironic. Nevertheless, its narrative endures: timeless despite its age, incessantly relevant in the face of London’s countless evolutions. A Christmas Carol, perhaps the canon’s best-known seasonal morality tale, has long been heralded for its dealings with both the natural and supernatural. Luckily, Gatiss is an aficionado of the gothic and of horror, having written or reimagined such stories for the BBC for many years. We, the audience, are in safe hands.
On stage too, A Christmas Carol lives on. Following its premiere in 2017, Jack Thorne’s adaptation has returned to the Old Vic for two consecutive years, with an additional transfer to Broadway. Last December, the festive season (for better or for worse) was peppered with radical reworkings of the production – Piers Torday’s first female Scrooge at Wilton’s Music Hall, or Immersive LDN’s Dickensian dining experience for example.
Under the direction of Adam Penford (who is also the Artistic Director of the Nottingham Playhouse), A Christmas Carol is promised to fright and delight. Spearheading an ensemble cast, it is Gatiss that will lead the charge on Ebenezer Scrooge’s eerie encounters with the dead – an arsenal of thrilling special effects on hand to help conjure the life and times of Dickens’ infamous miser.
Of the endeavour, Gatiss says: “A Christmas Carol’ has been absolutely my favourite story since I was, well, tiny. It’s an astonishingly powerful tale of life, love, loss and redemption and remains supremely relevant. But at its heart it is a ghost story and that will be at the core of my new version. A scary, thrilling, joyous adventure to get the blood piping on a freezing winter’s night. A Victorian phantasmagoria!”
A Christmas Carol will play at the Alexandra Palace from the 27th November 2020-January 10th 2021.
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