Jesse Koopman
Two smiling people.
Ben Haden (left) and La Shawn Banks in "A Christmas Carol," Children's Theater of Madison, 2022.
Charles Dickens’s classic tale, A Christmas Carol, was published on Dec. 19, 1843, and only five days later (on Christmas Eve) all 6,000 copies had been sold.
Amid a flurry of reprints in the following year there were already several adaptations for the stage, telling the story of the miserly Scrooge, the impoverished Cratchit family, the ghosts that would haunt Scrooge’s past, present and future, and the grave mistake of ignoring the needs of one’s fellow man. Since then, literally hundreds of versions of the seasonally appropriate, alternately harrowing and heartwarming story have been created. Over the last century the plot and characters have been repurposed for theater, opera, ballet, radio, film and TV productions, as well as comic books, graphic novels and even video games.
This holiday season Children’s Theater of Madison is bringing yet another adaptation of A Christmas Carol to the stage. Area audiences will be able to see this new iteration in Overture Center’s Capitol Theater, Dec. 10-23.
A brand new script was commissioned after longtime Christmas Carol actor and director James Ridge decided that 2021 would be his last year helming the traditionally enormous production. Connected with the show since 2009, Ridge spent several of those seasons directing Colleen Madden’s clever literary adaptation of the material.
“After we got over the shock of doing the show without Jim and Colleen, we suddenly realized that CTM had this great opportunity to refresh the story and update some of the elements,” says the production’s director and choreographer Brian Cowing, in a recent interview over coffee on Madison’s near west side.
While discussing possibilities for a new version of A Christmas Carol with CTM artistic director Roseann Sheridan, Cowing suggested working with playwright Charlotte T. Martin, who holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and works as the literary manager for InterAct Theatre Company. Longtime friends, Cowing and Martin grew up together in southern Wisconsin attending classes and participating in productions at Children’s Theater of Madison in the 1980s and '90s.
Although Martin had never written a play for young audiences before, their background with CTM made them an obvious choice for the project. “Brian was my first theater friend ever,” says Martin. “And now we’re doing my first kids show together!”
So, how does one remake a classic that many audience members regard as a hallowed family tradition and many others know word for word? Cowing and Martin started by asking a lot of people what they thought was absolutely essential about the well worn Christmas story. “We put the question to the CTM staff, to some young performers who had been in A Christmas Carol previously, and some who had only been in the audience,” Martin recounts. “We said, ‘What’s your favorite part? What do you like most and least? What are the things you’ve gotta have?’ And there were some obvious answers. Tiny Tim has to say ‘God Bless us every one.’ Scrooge has to say, ‘Bah humbug.’ But some of the answers surprised us.”
Cowing and Martin say that some young people they spoke to wanted more drama and pathos, while others wanted Scrooge to work harder to earn his redemption. Adults and children agreed that they were looking for more holiday cheer in the story, which was good news for the collaborators. “We both wanted to focus on joy,” says Cowing. “This version will definitely lean on that. It’s not nearly as dark or dense as the previous version. There’s lots of laughter.”
Cowing, an accomplished musical theater performer, vocalist and choreographer, also wanted more music and dancing in the show, and a story that moved along at a quicker pace. For their part, Martin was intrigued by Tiny Tim’s backstory and wanted to suss out more specifics about the young, tragic character. “Now we get a little more from him,” they says. “We fall in love with him in a new way.” Tim will also look different in this version — he will no longer walk with a crutch. Instead he has a serious illness in the story. “We’ve all lived through COVID,” says Martin. “Kids know what it means to be sick and how scary that can be. That’s enough.”
In another twist, Cowing suggested adding some characters from “The Lamplighters,” a farcical Dickens short story. “Our version is very much about community," he says. The lamplighters, who passed their profession down from father to son over generations, form one community. Scrooge’s nephew Fred is part of a different community and the Cratchits are another. At the heart of it, that’s what’s wrong with Scrooge. He’s cut himself off from everyone. So now when he reconnects, Scrooge feels that support, but he also realizes he has a responsibility to others.”
In addition to the new script, this production offers audiences a new set and new costumes designed by Shelley Cornia. It also features a new look, with thematic lighting design including 84 lamps, and a slightly smaller cast (15 young performers and 11 adults). Finally, Cowing hints that the Ghost of Christmas Future has a new look as well — very different from the black-clad, haunting figure of death that is normally pointing Scrooge to his doom. Instead he describes the third spirit to visit Scrooge as “astonishing” and “whimsical.”
“My hope for this adaptation and production is when people leave, they have a magical feeling," Martin says. "That they’ve had a great time and feel like this is part of what Christmas means to them.”
