{"id":18442,"date":"2017-12-07T14:33:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T13:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2017\/12\/07\/a-christmas-carol-review-dickenss-social-ills-touch-the-mind-but-not-the-heart\/"},"modified":"2017-12-07T14:33:17","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T13:33:17","slug":"a-christmas-carol-review-dickenss-social-ills-touch-the-mind-but-not-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=18442","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Carol review \u2013 Dickens&#039;s social ills touch the mind but not the heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon David Edgar\u2019s lively adaptation for the RSC foregrounds the tale\u2019s reforming message and features Phil Davis as a grotesquely good ScroogeThe great thing about Dickens\u2019s fable, which has spawned 250 film and stage versions in the last 70 years alone, is that it is infinitely adaptable. Where Jack Thorne in the current Old Vic production seeks to explain the source of Scrooge\u2019s misanthropy, David Edgar at Stratford lays stress on Dickens\u2019s anger at social evils. There is room for both but, in the end, I prefer the Old Vic version simply because it has more heart. Edgar, who famously adapted Nicholas Nickleby for the RSC, has had the ingenious idea of making Dickens himself and his editor, John Forster, part of the story. Dickens\u2019s fury at the exploitation of child labour is changed from a tract into a tale only at Forster\u2019s prompting. As the story proceeds, the two men turn from observers into participants, with Dickens taking the role of the young Scrooge at the Fezziwigs\u2019 ball. Dickens even explains to Forster, who would surely have known already, that his childhood experience in the blacking factory could easily have turned him into a robber or vagabond. Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/stage\/2017\/dec\/07\/a-christmas-carol-review-rsc-stratford-upon-avon-phil-davis\" target=\"_blank\">A Christmas Carol review \u2013 Dickens&#039;s social ills touch the mind but not the heart<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon David Edgar\u2019s lively adaptation for the RSC foregrounds the tale\u2019s reforming message and features Phil Davis as a grotesquely good ScroogeThe great thing about Dickens\u2019s fable, which has spawned 250 film and stage versions in the last 70 years alone, is that it is infinitely adaptable. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}