A Christmas Carol - Stave One, Part One

Full cast audio drama of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Adapted for audio by Paul A.T. Wilson CAST: Narrator: Paul A.T. Wilson Fred: Philip Barker Scrooge: Oliver Fry Gentleman One: Jai Brewer Gentleman Two: Paul A.T. Wilson Bob Cratchit: Richard Heaven PRODUCTION: Music David Pudney Sound Design: Paul A.T. Wilson Director/Producer: Paul A.T. Wilson Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon anything. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. Of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. The clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.