Word: cratchit
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lead singer of The Who, you sign up to play that lovable old misanthrope Scrooge in the community-theater stalwart A Christmas Carol. When he takes the stage at Madison Square Garden later this month, Daltrey, 54, will perform not with his longtime bandmates but with the quaintly impoverished Cratchit family. Why would a rock star who once typified disaffected youth take on such a role? "It interested me because it involved children," says the newly avuncular Daltrey. The man who once defiantly sang, "I hope I die before I get old," can now be caught warmly warbling, "God bless...
...McCarty, the Mississippi washerwoman who gave $150,000 to pay for scholarships at a local college. And, says Turner, he draws inspiration from A Christmas Carol ("the greatest book on giving I ever read") and the joy Scrooge finds when he finally adopts a more charitable attitude toward the Cratchit family...
...slapstick, too many of its gags come from easy TV references, and its worn-on-the-sleeve liberalism can play fast and loose with facts: Scrooge is condemned for not ponying up a ludicrously understated "few dollars a week" to provide health insurance for his secretary Cratchit and her jobless husband and six children. These faults are minor compared with amiable humor, skillful storytelling and an intelligent mix of today's world with Dickens' world view...
...uproarious mangling of Romeo and Juliet in Nicholas Nickleby. Props and gimmicks fail. The set collapses. One actor forgets all his lines in terror. And Tiny Tim, played all through rehearsals by a plump pubescent brat who has held the role for years and now nearly outweighs Bob Cratchit, decamps a day before opening, leaving the middle-aged "inspector" to inherit the part...
...YEARS AUDIENCES HAVE CRIED AT THE SIGHT OF the undersized lad bearing a single crutch who rides atop his father's shoulder. But Charles Dickens never revealed just what is wrong with Tiny Tim Cratchit, whose life is in chronic peril each Christmas. American pediatric neurologist Donald Lewis apparently couldn't take it anymore. After examining the literature, literally, on Tim, Dr. Lewis has come up with a professional diagnosis: distal renal tubular acidosis. According to A Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim lives to enjoy Christmases Yet to Come, thanks to a reformed Scrooge and his trio of conscience-raising phantoms...