Christmas Carol

 Custom Projects - July 2018

I'm a big fan of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I own multiple different movie versions, multiple different books, and I've acted in the play eight or nine different times - and music directed, and stage managed, and all the other things that go along with that.

So when I got the Lego set with the book open to a scene with Hans Christian Andersen and a swan, I knew that the modification of it was going to be A Christmas Carol. Then it was just deciding what to create from the show.  

I considered Tiny Tim and the rest of the Cratchit family, and I went as far as building a desk to do Scrooge's office. But there's not a lot of space to work with - the plates are just 6 x 8. I decided that the most important thing to show would be the Spirits. There are four Spirits in A Christmas Carol - and many lesser ghosts, during Marley's scene. So I did some mixing and matching among my minifigures, and came up with Scrooge, Jacob Marley, The Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Scrooge was not terribly difficult. A suit, a scowling face, and a top hat. He's actually the Hans Christian Andersen minifigure from the book set, with a scowling head swapped in. Marley is about the same, but I added a chain to him. And then I found a minifigure with a scary spooky dead-eyed look, and that made Jacob Marley. I originally used the desk chair I had made for Scrooge, but then I did a little bit of online searching for a Lego armchair, and made him a more comfy seat, where he sits by his fireplace and eats his gruel - until the bells and chains begin.

The Spirits were a lot of fun to create. The Ghost of Christmas Past is described by Dickens as "like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man." It wears a pure white tunic trimmed with summer flowers, and has a clear jet of light shining from its head. In the theatre, this is of course hard to create. The Spirit is usually cast as a young woman in a white dress. For my Past, I found a dress that worked among my minidolls, and found a spiky short blond hair to give her. She has a magic wand as well, which often happens in theatre productions. A certain young person in our family is quite convinced she is Elsa, so there may be some resemblance.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is usually a very Santa-like character, although theatre productions often have him in green Santa-like robes. I did have a red Santa hat, so I gave him a red cape and put him up on a step that might have some Christmas-tree shapes to it. And I gave him his torch, with which he blesses those that need it.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come - or Future to his friends - was really the easiest, as I had a 'specter' figure that came out with the Halloween figures. He originally had a white, kind of puzzled-looking face, but I replaced it with a solid black piece, and he looks quite a bit more foreboding now.

With Scrooge and Marley on one side, and the Spirits on the other, I replaced the piece printed with 'Hans Christian Andersen' with an appropriate quote from the book. "You will haunted by three Spirits."

Another Christmas Carol-related project I'm doing is writing a stage script that's adapted from Dickens' story. It'll be hitting the stage in December 2018. I've focused on having minimal props, and only 15 actors; I also updated some of the more confusing language and included a lot of narration that often has to be left out of stage versions.

The main stage piece is a Narrator's platform with a podium. In trying to get the idea across of what I want, I built a Lego mock-up of the podium. It turns on the platform to face the audience at an angle. That candle on the corner is for Bob Cratchit, and it's the only hint that Bob has a desk at all. You can see a large book on top of the podium, and from that book the Narrator 'reads' the story to the audience.

After building the podium & platform, I realized that my Charles Dickens action figure (because of course I have the action figure) fits just about right up there.

Yep, there he is behind the podium, taking the role of the Narrator. A couple of signs will hang on the podium at the appropriate points. 'Scrooge & Marley's' and 'Fezziwig's', for example.

Here's the book, with Mr. Dickens about to open and read from it. It's A Christmas Carol, of course, and it begins with "Once Upon A Time..."


You can see the crate on the back of the platform that holds the signs. In real life, of course, those will be backstage, but that crate holds them for the Lego model.

For the graveyard scene at the end of Christmas Future's bit, the podium holds a couple of surprises.

It rotates around to reveal the headstone that is shown to Ebenezer Scrooge - with his name already on it.

And the Narrator will control a light to shine on the headstone at the appropriate moment. That's me turning it on for now.

So that's the Lego mockup of my central stage piece for the play. And here's one more shot of Mr. Dickens/the Narrator about to tell us his ghost story.