A Christmas Carol Part One

By Charles Dickens

Download the audio (right click, save as)

Also:A Christmas Carol Part twoA Christmas Carol Part Three

We present a Storynory Pantomime – A dramatic audio presentation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens adapted by Mike Betteridge of The Working Space Theatre Company.

Illustrations by John Leech from first edition of 1843 are here.

If you are interested in the text of the original story, you can read it here.

He was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching covetous old sinner! Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? Even dogs appeared to know him, and then they saw him, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts.

Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy withal. And he could hear people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down.

A Merry Christmas uncle! God save you! cried a cheerful voice.

Bah! said Scrooge. Humbug! If I could work my will, every idiot with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Bertie and Storynory are pleased to present their first mini-play. Natasha plays many parts, including several ghosts who come to haunt the old miser Scrooge. She is joined by Robert Maloney, who peforms as Scrooge with a wonderful snarling voice .Natasha and Rob who acted these roles in the Winter of 05 for Working Space Theatre which tours primary schools. We use this wonderful adaptation by kind permission of its author, Mike Betteridge.

A Christmas Carol Part Two

By Charles Dickens

Download the audio here

The Curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. It was a strange figure – like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man. The voice was soft and gentle. I am the ghost of Christmas Past.

Long past? – inquired Scrooge.

No. Your past.

Scrooge made so bold to inquire what business brought the ghost there.

- Your Welfare.

A Christmas Carol Part Three

By Charles Dickens Download the audio play

A pantomime in three parts. See earlier parts:

A Christmas Carol 1

A Christmas Carol 2

A Merry Christmas Bob! – said Scrooge – A Merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I will raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this afternoon over a bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!

And it was always said of Scrooge that he knew how to keep Christmas Well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless us Every One!

————

In this third and final part we leave some of the pantomime comedy behind us, as the story turns to the theme of redemption. Rob Maloney puts in a moving performance as the reformed Scrooge. Natasha returns as the ghost of Christmas Present and in her several other parts.