Dolly Parton is bringing her talents to two Christmas Specials this year, one for the boards of London, and the other a prime time television movie.
Country music legend Dolly Parton, has made Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol, a new musical retelling the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol which will be opening in London, just in time for the holiday season.
Parton’s version of this Christmas classic is set in East Tennessee in the 1930s, with the grumpy penny-pinching Scrooge, who owns a mining town and finds himself being visited by three spirits during a holiday snowstorm, who compel him to see that love is the greatest and most precious gift there is.
Adapted by David H. Bell, Paul T. Couch, and Curt Wollan, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton herself. It’s set to be quite a joyous show.
“Bringing our reimagined Charles Dickens classic to London feels like a homecoming,” Parton has shared in a recent statement via the London theatre Co “My songs weave the music of my beautiful Smoky Mountains into this timeless Christmas story, and I can’t wait for London audiences to hear them as we tell that story, set in a place that is truly special to me.”
Damn, here’s hoping it’s going to get a streaming date in the style of the phenomenal NT Live, with their groundbreaking live streams of Frankenstein, Skylight, and the upcoming Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer.
For those of us that can’t head over to the UK, there is always Parton’s other upcoming Christmas project, Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas, A new NBC movie musical that Dolly will be starring in, which has been described as a modern-day movie musical about the making of a network TV special.
NBC Bringing Back Dolly Parton For ‘Mountain Magic Christmas’ Movie-Musical https://t.co/75syeFIAJI
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 16, 2022
TV Insider has called it, “A frenetic backstage story and delightful on-camera results of Dolly’s desire to uplift an exhausted world’s spirits by sharing the unique ‘mountain magic’ she has always found in and around Dollywood at Christmas,”
“Throughout the movie’s production numbers and rehearsal chaos, Dolly finds herself taking a private journey into her past, guided by the mysterious appearances of her personal Three Wise Men,” it adds.
“When it’s time for her big special to air live, a renewed and inspired Dolly goes rogue and shows the world that the real magic of Christmas lies in the hearts of the children we all once were, the realization that Christmas is about the people we share it with, and how her faith remains the common thread between Christmases past, present, and future,”
Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas will air this holiday season.
(https://t.co/OzVgGr44Of) pic.twitter.com/0gxYWLZuGH— Dolly Parton News (@PartonNews) May 16, 2022
I could do with some brand new feel-good Christmas viewing this year, not that I mind rewatching the classics, It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Very Murray Christmas, and the more contentious of the lot, Love Actually, you get my drift, but it never hurts to add something new to the ole Christmas repertoire. And I get the feeling that Dolly doesn’t disappoint.
This Christmas will see the European premiere of Dolly Parton's 'Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol' at the @southbankcentre in London. Her reimagined take on the Charles Dicken classic will play there from December 8th until January 8th 2023. Tickets go on sale on July 4th. pic.twitter.com/B0UvlaMYXX
— All That Dazzles (@ATDazzles) June 30, 2022
