A Christmas Carol

Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, New Road, Tuesday, December 15, to Sunday, December 20

The Spire, St Mark’s Church, Brighton, Wednesday, December 16, to Christmas Eve

Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Friday, December 18, to Saturday, January 2

“MARLEY was dead, to begin with.”

With those words in 1843 Charles Dickens began one of the best loved Christmas stories of the past two centuries – A Christmas Carol.

And if testament were needed for the novella’s ongoing power, Sussex is hosting four stage productions of the story this month.

New Venture Theatre’s take, adapted and directed by Sarah Davies, is finishing a week-long Brighton run this weekend.

And next week sees the launch of three very different productions – on the grand thrust stage of Chichester Festival Theatre, the intimate confines of Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, and Kemp Town’s newest community venue The Spire.

For Gary Sefton, director, adaptor and star of The Spire production, it was the church space which inspired him to bring his take on the story to Brighton.

“I’ve already performed in a very large production for Northampton Royal Theatre, and a smaller version in the new St James Studio Theatre, near Victoria,” says the Brighton-based actor.

“I just thought the church was perfect for this – it’s so evocative.”

Sefton’s take on the story is very traditional - using much of the original text.

And this is true of all three of the upcoming adaptations – even touring theatre company Box Clever’s modern day version which is coming to Brighton Dome Studio Theatre from Tuesday.

“The language is so important,” says director Iqbal Khan. “The adaptor Michael Wicherek [artistic director of Box Clever] has found a way of including the textures of the original language in the piece, even when writing in modern day speech.

“Often he’s writing in verse or iambic pentameter – it’s very musical and beautiful to listen to.

“Through his contemporary lines he gives the original lines resonance and an urgency. Often when people adapt these stories they give them a modern context and get rid of the language, thinking the story will sustain.”

Box Clever’s take on the Dickens’ tale is set in the modern day, with a pair of street buskers Jessica Dennis and Charlyne Francis telling the story and playing the various different roles after encountering Sean Kearney’s Scrooge.

“Scrooge is a modern businessman,” says Khan. “At this time it felt like a perfect way into the piece.

“Often when A Christmas Carol is produced it’s with holly and berries to the fore, very derivative and sweet. It’s actually a very cruel piece and quite frightening – about grief and loss and reconnecting - although ultimately it’s humanity and joy which comes out in the end. Scrooge has lost his humanity and forgotten who he was – he has to reconnect.”

It’s the ghosts who help Scrooge see the error of his ways that form the heart of Bryony Lavery’s take on A Christmas Carol.

Originally penned for Chichester Festival Youth Theatre in 2008, the production has been revived to mark the group’s 30th anniversary.

“I found a quotation halfway through the story which talked about other ghosts hanging around on street corners and watching from other worlds,” says Lavery, ahead of jetting off to New York to work on the book of a new musical with Douglas Hodge.

“It just made me think why don’t we have more ghosts? Everyone knows about the four in the story, but our version is told entirely by ghosts. They have come to sort out the morals and the heart of yet another person, and when they finish they might go off and tell another story somewhere else.”

Since its premiere in 2008, Lavery has taken the story to four other venues, finessing the script as she went to incorporate new ghosts and deal with scene changes. She wasn’t tempted to take the story out of its Victorian setting though.

“I think you would have to be very brave to put it in some other time,” she says. “People feel very comforted by its Victorian setting.

“If they are going to be scared they need to have a bit of distance. It’s the difference between this and something like [modern day horrors] The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. I don’t like being scared by them – I like everything to work out in the end!”

From his first scene Ebeneezer Scrooge is seen to be a miser, with a hatred for humanity.

In Dickens’ original story one of his first acts is to refuse to donate money to two charitable gentlemen – stating: “Are there no prisons?... And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?... The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour then?... I was afraid from what you said at first that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course.”

“What’s unsettling is he tells hard truths as he sees things,” says Khan. “It’s the sort of thing you hear UKIP saying today. He’s protecting himself against the world and other people’s pain. His arguments at the beginning make a horrible sense.”

Similarly Sefton used that same rhetoric as justification for not trying to update the story.

“He talks about scroungers who are going to these establishments,” says Sefton. “It gives you a chance to check in and think: ‘Do I really feel like that? Would I really turn somebody away?’”

As a succession of ghosts take Scrooge back through his past history the miser begins to see where things went wrong.

Traditionally a turning point is when he breaks off his engagement with Belle, his sweetheart.

“She sees he is addicted to money and can’t let it go,” says Sefton. “It’s Christmas Eve and he’s still working. He loses the love of his life and becomes wedded to the idea of money meaning security.”

But the origins of his loneliness can be traced back further in the story – to his school days.

“He is very lonely there,” says Lavery. “There are several bits of his journey that reveal his heart has gone cold and shrivelled, and it starts with him being sent to a terrible school.”

The looking back is something everyone in the audience can relate to Khan believes.

“It’s a very big theme,” he says. “The great tragedies in literature, like King Lear, have it too. Lear talks about having taken too little care at the end of his life.

“What has happened is he has taken his eye off the ball and followed the pressure to succeed. These are the various elements that motivate us when we’re younger.

"Perhaps you realise later in life you could have taken a similar path. What’s wonderful about the story is it suggests we can all change. We all have the ability to put things right. It’s ultimately an optimistic story.”

In terms of staging all three productions are innovative in their own ways.

Chichester Festival Theatre has its wonderful thrust stage, which puts the action out in amongst the audience.

The Spire production is being performed with the audience in a traverse setting – on either side of the space looking into the middle – with the candlelit church amplifying the Christmas carols sung in the story.

And the Brighton Dome Studio Theatre has a set made up of what looks like detritus that eventually become the building blocks of the story.

“The set keeps revealing itself in surprising ways,” says Khan of the design by Rhys Jarman, who also worked with him on the touring show Time For The Good Looking Boy.

“It starts off and looks like piles of rubbish and discarded furniture, but as the story goes on they all become used, like Scrooge retrieving his memories.”

A Christmas Carol continues to be important because, as Khan feels, it would be all too easy to fall into the same trap as Scrooge.

“It’s the archetypal story of trying to go beyond your own concerns and conquer that fear. It’s about finding the light of love, humanity or generosity to your fellow man. It has always been an incredibly moving story, and as long as we have an underclass and inequality it will always have that incredible power.”

*New Venture Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, at Bedford Place, Brighton, is on until Saturday, December 12. Performances at 7.30pm with a 2.30pm matinee on Saturday. Tickets £9. Call 01273 746118.

Brighton Dome: Starts 1.30pm (not Tues 14), 4.30pm (Tues 14 and Sat 19/Sun 20), 10.30am (Wed 16/Thurs 17) and 7pm Fri 18/Sat 19, tickets £12/£10. Call 01273 709709.

The Spire: Starts 6pm and 8pm, from £6. Visit www.scroogeinspired.co.uk

Chichester: Starts 7pm, matinees 2pm (4pm Boxing Day), tickets from £10. Call 01243 781312.

Watch the trailer video for Chichester Festival Youth Theatre's production below: