Interview with Theatre Award nominee James Hyland: ' I’ve always loved ‘A Christmas Carol’, having read the novella repeatedly and watched many of its adaptations over the years. It has never ceased to inspire me through the power and conviction of its narrative..'

What inspired you to re-write the Dickens Christmas great A Christmas Carol into a one man show from Marley's perspective?

I’ve always loved ‘A Christmas Carol’, having read the novella repeatedly and watched many of its adaptations over the years. It has never ceased to inspire me through the power and conviction of its narrative, and its message of redemption. My objective in adapting the story as a one-man show, told from the point of view of Jacob Marley’s ghost, was to further emphasize this message by highlighting the differences between a saved soul and one that is lost, Scrooge being the former and Marley the latter; to magnify the stakes and poignancy of the drama by having it told by a character that was part of the story in the first instance and therefore share his own personal and emotional response to the events therein; an individual who is literally imprisoned by his own feelings of guilt and remorse and desperately wants to convey its message to an audience by haunting them with the telling of it; a process of personalisation intended to allow theatre goers to revisit the classic tale with fresh eyes. Just as Marley returned to haunt Scrooge with a warning, so he returns to haunt us with the same.