C2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020the most faithful to a story that is not merely
about the miserliness of one man, but, po-
tentially, of all mankind.
So although there is plenty of ham here,
starting with Mays’s snarling, paranoid
Scrooge, whose lower lip hangs down to the
left as if to provide an exit ramp for his bile,
there is almost no honey glaze to sweeten it.
Most “Christmas Carol” adaptations de-
pend on that honey, just as theater compa-
nies that produce them each November de-
pend on ticket sales generated by a familiar,
“beloved” work they can market as family
entertainment to finance the rest of their
seasons. Even the impressive production
from the Old Vic in London, streaming Dec.
12-24, makes the story as festive as it can,
often by pelting it with food and music.
Not so with this version, adapted by Mays
and Arden and Susan Lyons and conceived
by Arden and the set designer Dane Laffrey.
For one thing, it insists on emphasizing the
act of storytelling, whether Mays is reciting
the text as a lively but neutral narrator or
portraying, seemingly simultaneously, all
the characters in a scene.
As he demonstrated in “I Am My Own
Wife” and “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love
and Murder,” Mays is an astonishing quick-
change artist. A heartier timbre gives us
Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, in a flash; a fling-
ing of hands makes an excitable child.
Even in the spiritual world, it takes just a
shift of color from the lighting designer Ben
Stanton and some increased reverb from
the sound designer Joshua D. Reid to com-
plete Mays’s leap from tormentor to tor-
mented in Scrooge’s confrontations with
Marley’s ghost. The other ghosts are ren-
dered with similarly effective theatrical illu-
sions, including shadows and puppetry by
James Ortiz.
And though the drama is occasionally
fleshed out with animations and recorded
elements rendered on LED tiles built into
the set — the haunting projection design is
by Lucy Mackinnon — they retain a prein-
dustrial aesthetic. Even the filmed figures
seen attending a Christmas dance in
Scrooge’s memory are kept upstage and de-
liberately blurry, their merriment general-
ized into distant hubbub. Mays remains al-
ways the most special effect.
That suits the subject. Filmed live but
with no audience on Oct. 28 at United Palacein Manhattan’s Washington Heights neigh-
borhood, this “Christmas Carol” uses the-
atricality as a metaphor for engagement in
the lives of others; the auditorium, emptied
by pandemic precautions, stands in well for
Scrooge’s unpeopled heart. As scenes of
other households’ happiness disappear on a
turntable or vanish into the flies, he remains
onstage for the entire 90 minutes, with only
hints of a back story to explain his omni-
present awfulness.
It is actually one of the problems with “A
Christmas Carol,” when adapted as drama,
that Scrooge and his transformation are so
thinly motivated: He is a horrible human
until he gets freaked by a bad night’s sleep,
at which point he turns into a completely
lovely one.
Some have discerned in this an allegory
for the unearned grace of Christian redemp-
tion, but Mays and Arden suggest a more
relevant interpretation. Dickens doesn’t
give Scrooge any normal psychology, they
demonstrate, because the man, like the
newly industrial society he profits from,
does not need it. His greed is hard-wired, a
genetic inheritance, a prehuman trait that
this human has turned into a rage for power.But not just one human. Perhaps un-
avoidably in our day, this “Christmas Carol”
takes every opportunity to underline Dick-
ens’s disapproval of a world that not only al-
lows but is organized to require extreme in-
equality. (Dickens himself spent part of his
boyhood working in a dismal boot polish
factory when his father was sentenced to
prison for debt.) Mays follows the money,
never letting us forget that structural pov-
erty makes misers of everyone. The
Cratchits’ Christmas goose is admired for
its tenderness, flavor and size but also,
Mays emphasizes with an odd turn of voice,
its “cheapness.”
Well, don’t let all that scare you too much.
There are comic and musical moments
throughout — albeit the fleeting comedy of
ironic observation and the melancholy mu-
sic of Sufjan Stevens singing carols. And we
do get Dickens’s completely jolly ending.
But make no mistake, this is a production
that understands “A Christmas Carol” as a
work of protest no less than “Oliver Twist”
and “Bleak House.” The question it raises
isn’t whether Scrooge can be salvaged by an
evening’s theatrics, but whether we can.JESSE GREEN THEATER REVIEWVIA A CHRISTMAS CAROL LIVEA Ham’s Holiday Classic, Minus the Honey Glaze
A Christmas Carol
Through Jan. 3 at
achristmascarollive.com.In this adaptation, Jefferson
Mays plays a Scrooge whose
greed is hard-wired, a
genetic inheritance and a
prehuman trait that he has
turned into a rage for power.CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1
LONDON — Twenty years ago, Sotheby’s and
Christie’s made money by auctioning art.
And that was about it. Now, in a process
fast-forwarded by the coronavirus pan-
demic, technology is transforming these
venerable names into very different-look-
ing businesses. Luxury is making that
difference.
Sotheby’s, under the tech-savvy owner-
ship of the French-Israeli telecoms mag-
nate Patrick Drahi, who who last year bor-
rowed $1.1 billion to finance the acquisition,
said in December 2019 that it would restruc-
ture itself into two “equally important”
global divisions: one for fine arts and an-
other for luxury, art and objects. Items such
as watches and jewelry were identified as
“key growth areas.”
Sotheby’s has had to catch up on its rival
Christie’s, which has been playing at the
luxury game since the early 2010s. Owned
by the French billionaire art collector
François Pinault, who also founded the lux-
ury goods group Kering, Christie’s intro-
duced online-only sales of designer hand-
bags in 2012, and these particularly ap-
pealed to Asian buyers. Five years later, a
white crocodile Hermès Birkin sold at a live
auction in Hong Kong for a record $380,000.
When the pandemic shut down live auc-
tions, Sotheby’s swung into digital over-
drive. This year, the company has held
some 320 online sales of art and luxury
items, more than three times the number
held during the equivalent period in 2019.
These have raised $425 million, as
against $60 million for the same period last
year, according to Mitzi Mina, the compa-
ny’s London-based head of press. In addi-
tion, plush new retail spaces, where
wealthy clients can buy high-end art and de-
sign straight from the showroom, have been
opened in London, the Hamptons and Palm
Beach, Fla.
According to Wendy Cromwell, a New
York-based art adviser and former Sothe-
by’s employee who follows the company
closely, the crucial gear shift into luxury
was made by Tad Smith, its president and
chief executive from 2015 to 2019. Last year,
before the pandemic, Sotheby’s reported a
$71.2 million loss. (Christie’s, which is pri-
vately owned, does not publish equivalent
annual profits or losses.)
“Margins were so eroded on the top lots
that they weren’t making enough money,”
Ms. Cromwell said. “So Tad decided to go
into e-commerce. It was a smart way to
scale the business by offering luxury at allprice points, from watches, to sneakers to
fine art.”
In 2019, worldwide auction sales of art
and antiques raised $17.9 billion, down 7
percent on the previous year, according to
data provided by Rachel Pownall, a profes-
sor of art and finance at Maastricht Univer-
sity in the Netherlands. The global market
for secondhand luxury goods like jewelry
and watches was valued at about 21 billion
euros, or about $23 billion, growing at 8 per-
cent a year, according to a report published
in September by Boston Consulting Group.
So the auction houses’ move into luxury
appears to be a financial no-brainer. But are
sales of luxury goods actually increasing
revenues?A detailed analysis of this most challeng-
ing of years, conducted by the London-
based art market research company Pi-eX,
shows that as of Nov. 20, Sotheby’s had held
160 specialist live and online auctions of
watches, jewelry and handbags, as against
48 in the same period in 2019. Yet revenues
of $339 million were up just 4 percent.
Christie’s has so far held a less aggressively
expanded roster of 38 equivalent sales,
which raised $251 million, down 42 percent
from last year, according to Pi-eX.
“The auction houses are scaling in terms
of the number of auctions, but not yet
money,” said Christine Bourron, Pi-eX’s
chief executive.
Ms. Bourron pointed out that many of
these proliferating luxury sales contained
just a few lots. A record-breaking $560,000
pair of Michael Jordan sneakers, for in-
stance, was the only item in a Sotheby’s on-
line auction in May. By preserving luxury
items’ aura of exclusivity and authenticity,
the auction houses make it more difficult to
increase revenues, Ms. Bourron said.
“They’re unable to do it by increasing
volume.”
But there is another, more compelling
reason that luxury has such a hold over auc-
tion house executives’ thinking.
“Art and luxury can coexist and comple-
ment each other very nicely,” said Josh Pul-
lan, the managing director of Sotheby’s
global luxury division. “Luxury is a great
entry point,” he added. Buyers were “open-
ing their minds to a broader range of collect-
ing categories,” but the 276-year-old auc-
tion house was not about to become a lux-
ury superstore. “Fine art is what Sotheby’s
is best known for, and that’s not going to
change,” he said.
Ms. Mina, Sotheby’s London-based head
of press, said that so far, 42 percent of the
bidders at its 2020 luxury sales have been
new. Fine art generates more than 85 per-
cent of the auction house’s annual turnover.
If a new client can afford to pay $10,000
for a pre-owned luxury item such as a hand-
bag, they might eventually gain the confi-
dence to spend $100,000 or even $1 millionat an art auction, where these centuries-old
companies have always made their biggest,
brand-enhancing sales.
“Now is the best time for Sotheby’s to af-
firm its position as a luxury retailer,” said
Kelly Meng Parnwell, a lecturer in luxury
brand management at Goldsmiths, Univer-
sity of London. “Luxury resale has become
a big trend in the market, but I understand
that Sotheby’s doesn’t want to lose any of its
heritage,” she said. “They need to balance
their heritage and luxury positions.”KARSTEN MORAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESGEORGE CONDO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK; CHRISTOPHER FAYAuction Houses Seek Growth in Luxury
Sotheby’s and Christie’s are
selling more designer items.
By SCOTT REYBURNVIA CHRISTIE’SSotheby’s galleries in East
Hampton, N.Y., top, and, above,
Palm Beach, Fla., where
George Condo’s painting “The
Outcast” (2019), right, is on
display along with high-end
design items. Left, the Hermès
Birkin that sold for $380,000
through Christie’s in 2017.