A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol at Spencer Theatre At Kansas City Repertory Theatre

The ghosts are coming, and Ebenezer Scrooge has nowhere to hide from his own life. Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s A Christmas Carol gives this November evening a deliciously unsettling prospect: a miser confronted by Christmas Past, Present and Future, with his chance at happiness hanging in the balance. Mark Robbins plays the man whose defenses make the haunting necessary. At Spencer Theatre, Dickens’s familiar Christmas story has a dark side worth making a theater date for.

Charles Dickens wrote a ghost story as well as a tale of generosity. The visits bring regret, lost opportunities and a frightening possible future into Scrooge’s reckoning. Come for that shiver of danger: the hope of a warmer ending matters because the warning is so cold.

Around Scrooge's crumbling defenses, familiar faces gather—the Cratchit family making celebration out of scarcity, Tiny Tim's quiet hope, Fezziwig's open-handed generosity. Adapted by Jason Chanos and Stuart Carden and directed by Darrington Clark, this version includes the Candlelight Carol, a moment of warmth against the cold. These aren't symbolic figures; they're people Scrooge has ignored, and watching him see them clearly for the first time gives the story its emotional power.

Live theater turns Dickens's characters into a shared family story unfolding in real time, with the Cratchits, Fezziwig and a stubborn miser giving different generations someone to care about. Grab your tickets for Kansas City Repertory Theatre's A Christmas Carol.