A Gilbert & Sullivan Christmas Carol
Book by Gayden Wren
Music by Arthur Sullivan
Production Runs
A Christmas Carol is one of the most resonant stories ever written in the English language, and its by-now-mythic tale of loss and redemption is to some degree affecting in every version ever done, from Mickey Mouse or the Muppets to the original book and, of course, in innumerable stage versions.
This play is no powerful psychodrama, but rather a light-hearted blending of two forms of Victorian storytelling which I love. Not a parody or a tongue-in-cheek knockoff, it's a festive holiday show with all the drama of the Dickens original and all the buoyant spirit of Gilbert & Sullivan — an excuse for a jolly old Christmas party in the best Victorian fashion.
After all, if there's one thing that Dickens stood for, and that Gilbert & Sullivan embodied, it's good, clean fun. Merry Christmas, everybody!
A Gilbert & Sullivan Christmas Carol was presented for the first time in 1994, by the Gilbert & Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island.
In 2001 it enjoyed a sold-out Off-Broadway run in New York, where The New York Times called it "extremely funny... sure to warm more than one cold heart" and The New Yorker acclaimed it as "The old tale newly interesting-and a lot more fun."