A Patrick Stewart Performs Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

"Newsweek"Reciting the litany of Scrooge's scrooginess, Stewart relishes the emotional gamut of meanness...Humbug seldom sounds so good. "The Washington Post"Not only is Patrick Stewart wonderful, but this is surely one of the best performances of "A Christmas Carol" ever recorded...By sheer energy and dramatic skill, Stewart invests this story with not merely life, but freshness, excitement and wonder. "Entertainment Weekly"A low tech audio Christmas card: no sound effects, no gimmicks, just one of the the great voices of the contemporary classical stage creating as vivid a cast of characters as Dickens imagines. The Royal Shakespeare Company veteran...doesn't so much read the story as inhabit it with infectious delight.

Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is now synonymous with greed and parsimony, believes Christmas to be "humbug." Refusing to donate any of his fortune to the poor, he comforts himself by saying, "I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry."But then the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, returns from the grave to haunt him. Dragging a long and heavy chain, representing his many sins, Marley sends down the three spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future to warn Scrooge against a similar fate...