Charles Dickens’ classic 1843 Yuletide story “A Christmas Carol” might just be the most frequently adapted holiday work of all time, with dozens of theatrical, live-action and animated film and TV interpretations through the decades. Whether it’s the 1951 gold standard film starring Alastair Sim or the long-running annual theatrical adaptation at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre or “The Muppet Christmas Carol” or one of the endless parades of TV series from “Sanford and Son” to “WKRP in Cincinnati” to “Saved by the Bell” to a “A Different World,” these interpretations almost always tell the story from the point of view of Ebenezer Scrooge or a character with Scrooge-like tendencies; we’ve always been led to believe Scrooge’s experience was a one-off.
One of the clever conceits of the bouncy, upbeat, impressively staged and eminently huggable parody musical comedy “Spirited” is that the story is told mostly from the viewpoint of the ghosts in the machine, if you will. And it turns out this is a sophisticated operation that saves one redeemable soul every year, meaning ol’ Ebenezer is just a crusty old figure from long ago, and more than a hundred folks have been made to see the light since then. The Ghosts of Past, Present and “Yet to Come,” working under the supervision of the stern but fair taskmaster Jacob Marley and with the help of a large and sophisticated support staff, have been doing this thing for decades. They’ve got this!
