A Christmas Carol

Marrying fidelity to Dickens' words with open, simple staging and costuming, McDonough's script is fresh and highly performable.A Christmas Carol has been one of the favorite presentations on Christmas programs for more than a century. Due to the multiple sets and numerous characters required, many dramatizations have failed in their presentations. Now, Jerome McDonough's adaptation offers an exciting style. Scene changes are effected by members of the "living cyclorama" (the chorus), thus maintaining the flow of the play even during slight pauses in the action. Characters enter the scenes from their positions on the cyclorama. This simplification of the physical aspects of the play has the added advantage of making the entire production highly portable. The original cast, for example, performed the entire play five times in five different schools in the time span of a single school day.