There's nothing warm and fuzzy about A Camden Christmas Carol, the multimedia production that opened last night at the Walter K. Gordon Theater on the campus of Rutgers University-Camden.

"The cartoon sense we've gotten of Scrooge is wrong," said Jean-Ronald LaFond, who plays the character created by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol.In Dickens' classic story, Ebenezer Scrooge is a cruel, bitter, miserly man who, through visits from three spirits - Christmases past, present and future - is transformed into a compassionate keeper of the true meaning of the holiday. The story has played so many times - in movies, television shows, cartoons - that the social message of the story, written in 1843, has been lost. And Scrooge, especially in cartoons, is often portrayed as a curmudgeonly but lovable old man.

"No one should mistake this as a children's story," director Barry Moore said before a recent rehearsal...