Interview with Michael Billington, A Christmas Carol critic

Interviewer: You wrote that one of Dickens' fables had been invigorated by the cultural shift in this production, could you expand a little on that?

Michael: I think what happens in this production is that Dickens' fiction, which is a universal story, but Dickens' fiction becomes rooted in a world of African fact. That to me was the really startling thing about it. The story of Scrooge is widely known, obviously, but by being transplanted to South Africa, and by the hero becoming a woman and by her being someone who has given up family and singing career to become head of a mining concern, what you got was a sort of re-thinking of the story so that it became part of South Africa' s current life. I mean the obvious point to make is that AIDS became the key factor in this. In other words, Dickens' story was preserved in outline but it was related to what is actually happening, has been happening, in South Africa for several years. That to me was the whole achievement of the whole theatre enterprise.