One of my favorite Christmas stories is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. For me, it’s a story that cements a connection between Victorian England and the holiday forever in my mind. So, for this Christmas Eve, I thought I would write about a couple of Victorian England and Christmas related things that I’ve seen or read recently.
I’ve written about how much we enjoy eating at Lawry’s: The Prime Rib in the past. This year, for the second time, we went to see their live dinner theater performance of A Christmas Carol. The play is presented in a dining room; the diners sit at tables around the performance space, and the cast perform the play in front of and around the diners.
We had attended the play for the first time a couple of years ago, and had a great time. The production faithfully adapts the novel, which is short enough that it doesn’t need a lot of abridging. I feel like the dialogue is all taken straight from the book, and it’s been long enough since I’ve read the original that nothing stands out as being missing.
The play breaks the story up into four acts (or three and an epilogue, or whatever), with courses served between the acts. I’ve been to Lawry’s so many times, I didn’t take any food pictures, and very few photos of the play.
The performers are all excellent. Two factors sort of give the production a community theater feel. Because the venue isn’t a standard theater, the whole thing is a lot more intimate, a feeling I associate with smaller, lower-budget venues. Also, a good chunk of the cast is played by members of a single family, and you can definitely see the family resemblance across the parents, brothers, and sisters.
There’s a lot of audience participation in these productions. This year, I got picked by Belle, Scrooge’s girlfriend, to dance with her at Fezziwig’s party. My wife took a video of that.
It’s also cute how the show makes references to the food that will be served. For example, Scrooge tries to dismiss Marley's Ghost as a bit of undigested prime rib. Later, before dessert was served, some characters make a comment about going off to eat some sticky toffee pudding. As others around our table were speculating what our dessert might be, I guessed it would be sticky toffee pudding, thanks to the reference in the show. Sure enough, that was what was served, and I will now think of it as Chekhov’s sticky toffee pudding: you don’t mention sticky toffee pudding in act one if you’re not going to serve it in act three.
I’m also a big fan of Sherlock Holmes pastiche novels, and I was excited to see that Titan Books was publishing Sherlock Holmes & the Christmas Demon by James Lovegrove.
In general, I’ve been paying attention to Titan’s Holmes novels because they tend to use authors I like, like Guy Adams, Cavan Scott, and George Mann. I haven’t read any of the Lovegrove books before this, but I felt like he really captures the feel of the Arthur Conan Doyle books. This particular story is filled with all the joy and trappings of the holiday, plus the creepier elements, such as a version of the Krampus folk tale featuring a creature called the Black Thurrick.
While I think Christmas is generally regarded as a bright and shiny holiday, it’s got its dark side as well, as can be seen so well in the work of writers like MR James, as well as the aforementioned Christmas Carol. This book does a great job straddling those two tones, and is a good Sherlock Holmes story besides.
And that’s about all I’ve got time to write if I’m going to get this posted on Christmas Eve. To those who celebrate it, have a Merry Christmas. To everyone, I wish you all a Happy Holidays, and a very Happy New Year!
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