The Hyena Reviews: A Christmas Carol
- By The Hyena
- Nov 21, 2017
- 2 min read
Bellarmine's Fall 2017 musical production A Christmas Carol is a heart-warming tale of yuletide compassion, despite its concerning irreverence for the dangers of time travel.
Though theatre goers will no doubt revel in the exuberant musical numbers that breathe new life into Charles Dickens's classic tale, the more discerning parent will no doubt recognize the dangerous message sent by the play: time travel is okay. The story’s genius is easy to see, and indeed it at times captures the very soul of the Christian morality that is the beating heart of the Bellarmine community. Unfortunately, this genius is entirely let down by its portrayal of time travel as a safe shortcut for showing sinners the error of their ways, without any warnings of how the practice can alter critical timelines, potentially sparking war, destroying society as we know it, or even preventing the births of Bellarmine's wealthy benefactors.
In many ways this musical is far more appropriate for a Christian audience than past selections such as My Fair Lady, a feature condemned by more righteous audiences for featuring a socially mobile woman that many scholars interpret as a heretical critique on the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on female ordination. Such flaws, however, pale in comparison to Dickens’s negligence in not offering even a token warning on the dangers of travelling to the past. More conscientious stories of time travel, from Asimov’s The End of Eternity to the more modern Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure demonstrate that it is a simple matter to showcase the dangers of time travel, making the absence of such a warning all the more conspicuous in Dicken’s masterpiece, and even suggest the author had sinister motives in penning his story.
In short, though many attendees will no doubt find the musical a charming tale of a man whose hard-heartedness was cured by Christmas spirit, or rather Christmas spirits, the more discerning viewer will recognize the troubling implications of raising the innovators of tomorrow on stories that do not instill in them a proper reverence for the past.
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