Thumbs-Up For Stewart's 'Christmas Carol'

Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard) has garnered rave reviews for his one-man performance of Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol.'

"It is an intelligent and wonderfully theatrical adaptation that suffers not a whit from the absence of other performers onstage," wrote Frank Scheck at the Hollywood Reporter (via StarTrek.com).

Calling the show "a wonderful holiday gift to New Yorkers," Scheck paid tribute to the nuances of Stewart's performance. "The canny actor also knows just when to inject a dose of theatrical levity," he wrote. "Taking a break from his strenuous exertions, he doesn't actually drink a glass of water; he mimes drinking a glass of water, and the audience laughs in delight at the audacity of that."

The review ended with perhaps the highest praise of all. "Dickens, who used to perform the piece in front of audiences himself, would no doubt have approved."

Over at the New York Times, the plaudits continued. "Mr. Stewart, who brings his 'Carol' to Broadway for the fourth time in a one-week run, gives full weight to the story's familiar, pious credo, 'God bless us, every one!' But he also illuminates an unstated message that has far older roots, 'Seize the day!' In so doing he restores the novelistic richness to a work that has repeatedly been distilled into sugary simplicity.

"His signal accomplishment here is to breathe ineffably theatrical life into Dickens's narrative and descriptive prose. Ultimately it is Dickens's language and Mr. Stewart's ability to make it palpable that make the evening shimmer."

The original articles can be found at StarTrek.com and the New York Times.

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