Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Thea Achillea | ... | Emily | |
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Ruby McMillan-Wilson | ... | Alice |
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Oliver John Lock | ... | Peter / Robert Cratchit's Voice |
Richard Cotton | ... | Father | |
Georgina Sutcliffe | ... | Mother | |
Siân Phillips | ... | Grandmother / narrator (voice) | |
Simon Russell Beale | ... | Scrooge's voice (voice) (as Simon Russell-Beale) | |
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Michael Nunn | ... | Scrooge's dancer |
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Sydney Craven | ... | Martha's voice (voice) |
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Faith Prendergast | ... | Martha's dancer |
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Masha Tarasova | ... | Alice Cratchit's dancer |
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Kirill Ivanitskiy | ... | Robert Cratchit's Dancer (as Kiril Ivanitskiy) |
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Archie Durrant | ... | Tiny Tim's voice |
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Danil Golovam | ... | Tiny Tim's dancer |
Sarah Schoenbeck | ... | Sarah's voice |
A reinvention of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The radical new take on Dickens' classic seeks both to exhume the original story's gritty commentary on social inequality and the corrupting influence of greed, and to breathe new life into the lyricism of the original text by setting its scenes to extraordinary tableaux of modern dance. The opening scenes of the film follow a Victorian family preparing a toy theatre for their annual performance of 'A Christmas Carol'. As the family's grandmother narrates the much-edited story and her grandchildren change the scenery, we enter the imagination of one of the children in the audience and watch as the cardboard stage, and the story with it, transforms into a darkly fantastical otherworld.
There are many versions of this story, because there are many ways it can be portrayed. This is the most natural version of scrooge, a real believable person not a characture. The story highlights the horror of the era as Dickens intended, not sweep them under the carpet. The dance carrys you through the story with a mixture of strength and ethereal beauty. It's a true Christmas delight and one that I shall add to my watch list for Christmas's to come.