Today I finished writing the script for A Christmas Carol, the radio play we are performing this year. When I say I wrote it, it was more of an adaptation on my part, the bulk of the heavy lifting on this job had already been carried out 173 years ago by my co-writer Charles Dickens (that's how I'm going to do the writing credit, although I think it would be more polite to put his name first). Obviously there wasn't a great deal of work involved as there is nothing you can do to improve on the story, unless you count Scrooged which retells A Christmas Carol in modern times (or modern times in 1988), although I would argue that it isn't an improvement as such more of a clever remake. The same argument I would offer up when mentioning Ebenezer, a western re-imagining with Jack Palance, or Ross Kemp's portrayal of Eddie Scrooge in the 2000 television movie A Christmas Carol. The great thing about A Christmas Carol is that you have total poetic licence with the story mainly due to it not being in copyright due to its age. You have the beginning, middle and end and how you get there is entirely up to you. The Muppets follow the story closer than most adaptations, others only use the original story as a guideline. The musical version starring Albert Finney goes totally mental in the final act and Kelsey Grammar's film version shows Scrooge's father being sent to debtors prison and Scrooge turning down his mentor Fezziwigg's plea for a loan to prop up his business.
This particular job I had was to re-write the script for a radio play that was broadcast live in America in 1939 and as radio in those days (in America, we only had BBC in those days) was heavily sponsored, large parts of it needed removing as the play tends to veer off on occasion and start waxing lyrical about Campbell's Soup. Campbell's Playhouse was the umbrella title of a radio series that ran on radio during the 1930s and 1940s and this is the script that I am using for the radio play we are staging. What is interesting is how much is missing from this version but it isn't noticeable once you get into the swing of things and lose yourself in the story.
All going well this production will have a few performances that will be recorded and either the best one or an edited together version will be made available for free download on Christmas Eve.
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