A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens

This is a musical adaptation of the wonderful book by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. The story of Christmas Carol is of Ebeneezer Scrooge, an old crooked rich man who is too selfish and cold-hearted to embrace the spirit of Christmas. During the night he is visited by his old partner Jacob Marley who have suffered in death because of how he lived his life as Ebeneezer is living now. To help Ebeneezer before it is too late, Marley says three ghosts will visit Ebeneezer and show him the errors of his ways. Through the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Ebeneezer goes on an amazing journey through his entire life and understand what Christmas really means.

But now to the play. It was horrible. First the music arrangements are bad, there are moments where the actors are just waiting for the music to come in for them to carry on the song and this just made it really drag on needlessly. The acting too was poor. It felt like they were just reading their lines. The singing was very bad as well, there was no energy and charisma from any of the main actors. At one point I actually wanted to sing along because I felt I could have sung louder than that and made it more lively. The only redeeming factor was the acting by the many children. The children actors were actually better than the grown ups. They sang, dance and acted quite well. Other than that everything was downhill from the get go. There was no climax in any of the singing and it was very difficult to get into the wonderful story that is A Christmas Carol.

It was just very painful to watch. I spent most of the play shaking my head and thought that this does not do the story justice at all. I considered walking out after giving the play 15 minutes. At the intermission I really wanted to leave but stayed on anyways in hope of giving it a chance to improve. But it did very little to redeem itself. All in all, this musical really sucked the Christmas spirit right out of me. I shall need to read Dicken's book to redeem it.