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January Meme: Favorite version of "A Christmas Carol"
Everyone else seems to reply to this question with the Muppets version. Now, I like the Muppets version and admire its cleverness, but my favourite Christmas Carol adaption is actually not any of the film versions, but the audio recording of Patrick Stewart's stage performance. Not, I emphasize, the made for tv 1999 adaption where Stewart plays Scrooge; no, I mean the stage solo version he did for the RSC in 1993, and for which he won an Olivier. Alas I did not have the chance to see it on stage, but a kind soul gave me the tape - this was when tapes were still a thing - and I loved it. The key difference here is that Patrick Stewart doesn't just play Scrooge, he recites Dickens' prose - a very different thing - and the way he brings those lines to life, the versatility of it, is nothing short of amazing. To quote from this review : You notice at once that there aren’t many actors left like Stewart these days, actors who can speak with such exemplary power and clarity. When he declares: “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner”, every word, every syllable, is made to count. He relishes all the glorious energy, flavour and humour of Dickens’s prose, and Scrooge suddenly seems to stand before us in all his grotesque glory. (...) In the course of the show, Stewart plays some 40 characters, ranging from the falsetto innocence of Tiny Tim to the disgusting squalor of Old Joe, the greasy rag-and-bone man in his filthy lair. Has the ghost of Marley ever seemed more pitifully sad, the joy of the Cratchits’ Christmas celebrations more touchingly merry? I beg leave to doubt it.
Stewart also proves a virtuoso when it comes to pace and mood. There are rapt passages here when the whole audience seems to be holding its breath as Stewart lays bare the darkness of Scrooge’s soul and the terrible urgency of turning it to the light. But then he will suddenly relax into humour and vitality, picking up the narrative thread, barreling through the action and imitating the chimes of the bells (“Ga-doing, Ga-doing”) with almost childlike enthusiasm.
And that's why even the mere audio recording is my favourite adaption of A Christmas Carol.
The other days
Stewart also proves a virtuoso when it comes to pace and mood. There are rapt passages here when the whole audience seems to be holding its breath as Stewart lays bare the darkness of Scrooge’s soul and the terrible urgency of turning it to the light. But then he will suddenly relax into humour and vitality, picking up the narrative thread, barreling through the action and imitating the chimes of the bells (“Ga-doing, Ga-doing”) with almost childlike enthusiasm.
And that's why even the mere audio recording is my favourite adaption of A Christmas Carol.
The other days
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That's really lovely.
My favorite version is the 1951 Scrooge (U.S. A Christmas Carol) with Alastair Sim.
[edit] Speaking of the performance of Dickens' narration, I assume I have already recommended—or you have already seen—the monumental RSC The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby recorded and broadcast in 1981?
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My love of A Christmas Carol comes from my mother reading it aloud every year (one 'ghost' per advent Sunday and ever year Tiny Tim's death was more difficult to get through), so Dickens' prose is what I fell in love with.
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I've seen him on stage four times -- in that, in Waiting for Godot with Ian McKellan, and twice as Prospero in The Tempest, once in New York and once in Stratford UK. Always worth it.
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