Book: Mike Ockrent & Lynn Ahrens
Music: Alan Menken
Lyrics: Lynn Ahrens
Writer: Charles Dickens
Director: Joseph Houston
A Christmas Carol might not be the cheeriest of stories for a festive season family show, and this version, despite being an upbeat musical, doesn’t shy away from the darkness of death, poverty, downright meanness and scary ghosts. But all that is, of course, what makes it the most theatrical of Dickens’s novels.
We’re in a graveyard, all stark white light, blues and greys, then whisked away to a London street where the rich and poor are all excited about Christmas. All smiles and wrapped up parcels, they launch into the first of many big brassy numbers – Jolly Good Time. Then off they all go to their warm, bright homes to soak up the Christmas cheer, and we’re left with Evelina Scrooge, huddled in a chair, in a threadbare dressing gown, grumbling about losing a day’s business. Not only that but she’s seen something strange as she arrives home – an apparition of her deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, a bit of a turn that she explains away due to being ‘overworked and overtired’.
What happens next is a bit harder for her to ignore. Marley’s ghost (Barry Keenan) bursts through the door, wrapped in chains, staring, staggering and shouting. While there’s a touch of Beetlejuice in Keenan’s performance, he’s a frightening, unhinged madman, confronting the audience as much as Scrooge, and we get a sense of what we’re in for.
There’s lots of these bleak moments throughout the show, but they’re beautifully balanced with some well-choreographed (George Lyons) and visually stunning big musical numbers. Each of the ghosts gets an all-singing, all-dancing showstopper – Marley and a bunch of ghouls deliver the delightfully spooky Link By Link. The giggly, freaky fairy Ghost of Christmas Past (Mari McGinlay) sets the scene for the boisterous, comedic Fizziwig’s Annual Christmas Ball. Present (James Hume) is an outrageous pantomime dame, and his marvellous Abundance and Charity, complete with fan-dancing girls, is a real highlight. Future’s (Josie Benson) Dancing On Your Grave sees her turn from old hag to sexy widow, supported by a host of dancing monks. Who doesn’t want a bit of that at Christmas?
Superb direction (Joseph Houston) means that the show is well paced, wasting not a moment of it’s interval-free ninety minutes, and making great use of a set that brings together the three dimensional with slick projections (Luciano Williamson). There’s perhaps some overuse of video, at times distracting from the live action, and occasionally just causing a confusing visual onslaught, but on the whole it works. There could also be less trundling about of props and set on wheels, though, most of which adds nothing to the action.
The gender swapped Scrooge (Claire Moore) works well. The reasons for her miserliness are deftly sketched out – family bankruptcy, lost love, and fear of further failure – giving her a convincing back story. Other than a few minor tweaks, Mr Scrooge requires very little rewriting to become Miss Scrooge. You could argue that the lack of charity and humanity is more poignant in a woman – with the traditional gender expectations – but that’s wisely left unsaid.
As a relatively unfamiliar musical, lacking the ‘songs that everyone knows’, there’s plenty of relatively memorable ones here that you might just come out of the theatre humming to yourself. It’s the performances that make them memorable though – Alexander Evans and Josie Benson’s Mr and Mrs Fezziwig brilliantly deliver their party song, James Hume’s showtune is a bit of a winner, and the kids in the cast show off some pretty impressive skills too.
A Christmas Carol: The Musical makes for a great, if slightly alternative, Christmas show. While it’s not packed with laughs, it’s a warm-hearted and beautifully crafted piece of theatre.
Runs until 5th January 2025