![]()
ACT ONE
Scene One
The stage is empty, minimalist, forbidding, stark. Children weep, critics carp, parents complain. Can this really be the Christmas show?
Two YOUNG MEN in their early thirties burst on to the stage. The first – CHARLES DICKENS – waves a closely printed government document. The other – JOHN FORSTER – has a Newcastle accent.
JOHN. For Christmas?
CHARLES. Yes.
JOHN. You cannot be serious.
CHARLES. I have never been more serious.
JOHN. But for Christmas…
CHARLES (waving the report). Have you read this?
JOHN. I don’t need to read it.
CHARLES. It’s entitled ‘The Physical and Moral Condition of the Children’ – that’s the children…
JOHN. It’s a government report.
CHARLES. ‘…and Young Persons Employed in Mines and Manufactures…’
JOHN. Dickens. You of all people cannot produce a tract…
CHARLES. I shall call it ‘An Appeal to the People of England…’
JOHN.…based on a government report…
CHARLES. ‘…on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.’
JOHN. … and claim that it’s a Christmas book, by you.
CHARLES. I am a radical, campaigning writer. I fight for social justice. Why dress it up as entertainment?
JOHN. Well, because you have a public –
CHARLES (waving the report). In the factories, some children start their work at four.
JOHN. At four in the morning?
CHARLES. Four years of age.
Slight pause.
JOHN. But even so.
CHARLES flips through the report:
CHARLES. ‘Children in breach of apprenticeships are committed to jail.’
JOHN. Your public has legitimate expectations…
CHARLES. ‘Conditions are especially bad in nail-making, lace-making, the hosiery trades…’
JOHN. Heart-warming humour. Powerful descriptive passages.
CHARLES. ‘The work generally causes deformity of the spine, so that a “lace-runner” can be known by her walk.’
JOHN. Memorable characters with witty, emblematic names.
CHARLES. ‘There is no class of persons in this country, living by their labour, whose happiness, health and lives are so unscrupulously sacrificed as those of young dressmakers.’
JOHN. Emotion! Tears and laughter! Happy endings!
CHARLES. Happy endings?
JOHN. Yes!
CHARLES. ‘While the life of a dry-grinder scarcely averages thirty-five years.’
JOHN. But, Dickens. Christmas. Holly. Snow.
CHARLES. Forster, we are thirty-one. And when did it last snow at Christmas?
It starts to snow.
JOHN. Goose with sage and onion stuffing.
A CHILD runs across the stage.
Plumcake for the children.
Then the stage floods with Christmas. Trees are carried home, FAMILIES buy mistletoe and holly from STREET SELLERS, joints of beef, great hams and trays of mince pies are delivered, chestnuts are sold, CHILDREN throw snowballs, a group of merry SINGERS strike up a Christmas song.
Mince pies lit up with flaming brandy. Dancing. Play-acting. Wassailers trudging along country byways.
And perhaps we see people we will meet as the play progresses: LADY TIBSHELF and MRS TROWELL, MR and MRS BALDOCK, the CRATCHIT FAMILY, FRED, his pregnant wife JANE and her sister LUCY. As, at the back of the stage, detached from the merrymaking, BUSINESSMEN at the trading exchange pass notes and bills. But then, suddenly…
CHARLES. No.
Everything stops. EVERYONE looks at CHARLES.
We owe it to these children that we hear them.
JOHN. Dickens, send a letter to the Morning Post. And then, write / a –
CHARLES. Forster, I knew something of all this, in my own life.
JOHN. Then do what you do best. And write it as a story. Which will echo down the ages.
Upstage, a man in black, in his fifties, bids a frosty farewell to the BUSINESSMEN and sets off back to his place of work.
CHARLES. As a story.
JOHN. As a story!
CHARLES. Rather than a pamphlet, as you say, a tract…
JOHN. Indeed!
CHARLES. A story might have even greater force.
JOHN. I’d say, twenty thousand times the force.
CHARLES. And echo down the ages.
JOHN. Yes.
And Christmas starts up again. JOHN clasps CHARLES’s arm.
CHARLES. As long…
JOHN. As long?
CHARLES (waving the report). As its subject is oppression. Misery and want.
And now the stage is emptying, as the man in black strides on, a path forms around him, MERRYMAKERS pulling back, as if from an icy blast. A small CAROLLER – brave but desperate – stands in his way.
JOHN. And how to you propose to achieve this?
CHARLES. I…
CAROLLER (sings). God bless ye merry, gentlemen, Let nothing you –
SCROOGE. Do I appear in want of blessing? Do I look remotely merry?
CAROLLER. No, sir, but –
SCROOGE pushes the CAROLLER aside.
SCROOGE. Bah! Humbug!
CHARLES. Yessss.
Now the CROWD is almost gone, and SCROOGE’s counting house – with its battered sign ‘Marley and Scrooge’ – is emerging.
JOHN (accepting the inevitable). And does this appalling misanthrope possess a name?
CHARLES. Ebenezer – Scratch. Screw…...
