Cranford Review 2019

A Christmas Carol
On
Wednesday 5th December 2018, the English
Department invited Ginficent’s performance of A
Christmas Carol to Cranford Community College – the second
year in a row.
Throughout the Autumn term, year 8 students had been studying
the timeless tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the many ghosts
of Christmas. It was a chilly, cloudy day, perfectly setting the
tone for the tale to be told as part of a live performance. The
students, a little unsure of what to expect at first, left the show
feeling happy and satisfied with what they saw. They loved
that the actors performed the characters with such zeal and
added humour to the show to really showcase what the spirit of
Christmas is all about. It was an interactive performance which
brightened the day and really did help emphasise the need for
dramatic performances of texts. Here is just one example of
how year 8 responded to the book and the performance.
Sahrish Shaikh (English Department)
In “A Christmas Carol”, the social hierarchy
is presented with the upper class having more
wealth and power as the lower class lived in
poverty. The wealthy (Scrooge) are shown
as mean, cold-hearted people as they have
no respect for the lower classes. Scrooge is
also mean to his own nephew who is rich
and loves Christmas, Fred is wealthy, but
Scrooge is wealthier. Charles Dickens is
trying to send a didactic message to the rich
in Victorian London.
A Christmas Carol is a good book. I also
thought the storyline was interesting and
unique. At the start, Charles Dickens
presents Scrooge as a cold hearted and bitter
character. When he is visited by the three
spirits he starts to change as he sees his
happy but also sad school life when he was
poor and isolated. At the end he is jolly and
happy and very charitable. We don’t think
A Christmas Carol is a good book for the
society we live in today. It mostly suits the
Victorian era, as the upper class did not care
for the working class. The message from the
book was to be grateful for what you have
and be charitable. The part that I like the
most was at the end when Scrooge changed
and is happy and charitable.
The play of ‘A Christmas Carol’ was very
good. We loved it as we could see what it
was like in a Victorian house and the place
where Scrooge worked. We also wanted to
see how he talked to his worker and the
people who needed to pay Scrooge and when
he died, seeing his future. The actors did a
good job taking the roles of lots of different
characters. The person who played Scrooge
did a brilliant job – he was very funny. The
part we liked the most was when Scrooge
changed and when he was jolly; it was
quite funny when you could see him shaking
everyone’s hands in the audience wishing
them a “Merry Christmas and a Happy New
Year!”
The saddest part of the play which was even
in the book was when tiny Tim died and
Scrooge felt sympathy for him. We think
it was an important turning point for his
character in the play and the text itself.
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Taseen Ismail, Rosy Mustaffa, Jagveer Kang
& Zohaib Butt (year 8)