Arts & Culture

Syracuse Stage Announces 2013 Production of ‘A Christmas Carol’

Monday, April 1, 2013, By News Staff

The beloved holiday classic “A Christmas Carol” returns to Central New York after a seven-year absence in an all-new adaptation and production from director Peter Amster (“Moby Dick,” “The 39 Steps,” “This Wonderful Life,” “The Fantasticks”).

“He was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.” But somewhere deep inside Scrooge there remains the little boy still capable of feeling love and joy. This song- and dance-infused adaptation sticks closely to Dickens’ classic tale to awaken the heart of that lost little boy.

On April 15, current season ticket holders can renew their 6-Play Package that will include a ticket to “A Christmas Carol.” Additional single tickets and tickets to the general public will be available at later dates TBA. Appropriate for all ages, “A Christmas Carol” will run Nov. 23—Dec. 29 in the Archbold Theatre. It is a co-production with Syracuse University’s Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

Adapted by acclaimed playwright Romulus Linney, “A Christmas Carol” was first produced at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre in 1995.

Having written more than 30 plays, Linney is perhaps best known for adapting Ernest L. Gaines’s novel “A Lesson Before Dying,” produced at Syracuse Stage in 2002. Other works by Linney include “The Sorrows of Frederick,” “Holy Ghosts,” “Childe Byron” and “Heathen Valley.” In 2012, a year after his death, Signature Theatre Company named a theater in his honor.

Upon revisiting Dickens’ “Carol,” Linney remarked at how he was “amazed not only at its beauty and durability, but at its blazing theatricality.” He observed that “it is part Hamlet, in its devastating revelations by fantastic ghosts, part Everyman, in its sure progression toward spiritual salvation, and part Charlie Chaplin, in its fun and overflowing good spirits.”

Linney’s “A Christmas Carol” delights with live music and a cast of more than 25.