It should, and not just because the film, streamable through Jan. 3, is vastly effective as spooky entertainment. Based on Dickens’s touring version of the tale, itself slightly altered from the printed text, this “Christmas Carol” is the most fearsome I’ve seen — I mean morally fearsome. It is thus the most faithful to a story that is not merely about the miserliness of one man, but, potentially, of all mankind. Most “Christmas Carol” adaptations depend on that honey, just as theater companies that produce them each November depend on ticket sales generated by a familiar, “beloved” work they can market as family entertainment to finance the rest of their seasons. Not so with this version, adapted by Mays and Arden and Susan Lyons and conceived by Arden and the set designer Dane Laffrey.

Source: New York Times November 30, 2020 19:07 UTC