Boson Hosts PBS Adaptation of Dicken's Xmas Carole on Zoom Theatre

 Boson Hosts PBS Adaptation of Dicken's Xmas Carole on Zoom Theatre

 

As the festive season approaches there is, inevitably, a new adaptation of a Christmas Carol on Massachusetts public television station WGBH and simulcast on Zoom.

In an attempt to distinguish itself from the 697 other adaptations of a Christmas Carol currently available, this one will be set in Boson, Massachusetts during the colonial era of the Commonwealth.

Something with old fashioned hats like from Thanksgiving, and blunder buss rifles that are more of a danger to the person shooting than the target.

“Whilst we are big fans of the original story, we feel that this new interpretation of the classic tale could really make it relevant for a new generation,” is definitely the sort of thing a station executive would say about a new adaptation of a Christmas Carol.

The new version will feature Scrooge as the quintessential 'angry white male.' Scrooge will be the only white man in the feature. Scrooge is a grumpy businessman who owns land and stocks and pushes everyone to the limit around him.

In keeping with the Puritan laws in Massachusetts at the time Scrooge will forbid the celebration of Christmas as popish idolatry.

Bob Cratchit will be played by a transgendered woman who is a vision of kindness.

A black servant doorman has been added to the story to give Scrooge someone to talk to and also to say the right thing after everyone of Scrooge's stupid, selfish, Puritan beliefs are expressed.

Scrooge eats his oatmeal and goes to bed to be visited by three different Native American Indian ghosts. Each ghost takes Scrooge on a journey to parts of Massachusetts at different times in history.

Scrooge sees himself as a child on a ship coming from England. He sees himself burying a penny on Boson Commons hoping to grow a coin tree where he could harvest copper pennies. The ghost shows him in a church school yard being taunted by the other children because he loved money.

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," the children called in an allusion to Christ's episode in the Temple in Jerusalem where he went nuts and knocked all the money changers tables over.

"I loved money," Scrooge said to the Ghost of Massachusetts Past. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

"What good is money?" The Native American Indian Ghost of Massachusetts Bay Colony Past asked.

"Money can be exchanged for goods and services," Scrooge explained.

While Scrooge is uber grumpy at the start of the story he slowly softens. Scrooge is positively beaming by the time the Ghost of Xmas present takes Scrooge to a hanging of a witch on Boson Commons. The heretic was a woman who held prayer meetings in a house next door to Scrooge even after people had pointed to the passages from Saint Paul saying women should keep their mouth shut in church.

"But I'm not in church," the woman said. "Anyway, Saint Paul was gay, he said that men would rather have sex with other men, but that it was their duty to God to have sex with women to create children."

She is shown still spouting off heresies while she is lead to the gallows.

(Boson's Islamic Society has complained that showing the public hanging is a subtle 'dog whistle' to racists who oppose the numerous Islamic governments and freelancers who execute people publicly for witchcraft or for being heretics.)

While the work strains at times to include Massachusetts history in the Dickens short story the main idea gets through. Scrooge is shown that he could be a lot happier if he wasn't so grumpy and trying to impose his views on others while fleecing them financially.

"I never thought of that," says Scrooge

Everyone cheers and everyone sings a nice song and then goes home.

It’s probably what Charles Dickens would have wanted.

The news of a new adaptation of Christmas Carol comes in the wake of last year’s adaptation of Dickens New Years Eve story "The Bells" by Alcoholics Anonymous Players which finished with a big 'water drinking' contest and everyone getting home to bed at a decent hour.