TAKE heart at Yuletide with a choral and musical adaptation of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ in ‘Scrooge’.
Created by Margaret Hough (Spotlight Stage School, Seoda Chamber Choir and Actors’ Co-op), she presents this independent, appealing production at Belltable on Friday 16, 8pm; Saturday 17 at 4pm and again 8pm.
“I devised and directed ‘Scrooge’ first in No. 2 Pery Square, taking it through the house and out into the coach house in the garden,” Margaret says. “That’s quite a while ago and Binneas Chamber Choir sang the music. The actors’ lines tell the tales and the choir sings the music here and there, songs to suit the drama.”
There are ten actors with experienced names among them, Brian McNamara, John Finn, Paul McCarthy and the writers Róisín Meaney and Evelyn Cosgrave. Combined with five child actors, “they double and triple up playing different roles. There are about 25 characters in all”.
She feels Dickens’ own experience of poverty informed his writing of the original. The man knew plenty of it: “‘Scrooge’ is primarily a ghost story, with the character of Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley who tells him to change his ways. He is given the opportunity to redeem his life”.
And so an earnest life begins, led by the Ghost(s) of Christmas as Ebenezer moves on from being a soul who feels the poor are better off dead than fed.
The choir’s Maire Keary Scanlon directs their singing of a variety of works – ‘Pie Jesu’, ‘Verbum Factum Est’ and ‘Snow’ among them – that nudge the action along in this costumed period piece. Mario Beck and Bríd Finn feature in the strong production team.
www.limetreethteatre.ie
