Writer: Charles Dickens and others
Director: Richard Avery
On the coldest night of the year the good folk of Beverley left their fog-shrouded streets, kept their overcoats and anoraks on and settled down for a jolly evening. And that is what they got, if perhaps a little lacking in substance compared to previous Christmas offerings. Initially your reviewer felt some concern at the overuse of grandiose titles: Sir Clive Kneller was introducing a bill of artists such as Baroness Alice Gold and Peter McMillan, Esquire, the Tinkling Turn. An outbreak of Leonard Sachs circumlocutions (just to show he could!) and “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” from the audience soon settled down to a routine of Kneller toping steadily, introducing special guest Charles Dickens and being disappointed as his eager runner, Gordon Meredith, came up with assorted reasons for his non-arrival.
A Dickens of a Christmas is a joint effort by stalwarts of East Riding Theatre and Other Lives Productions, also based in Beverley. Richard Avery directs, but credit for devising the show is shared with Gordon Meredith, Clive Kneller and Neil King. The core of the evening is three extracts from A Christmas Carol: Scrooge in rampant “Bah! Humbug!” mood with Fred and the charity workers, the arrival of Marley, Scrooge on Christmas morning.
In between these extracts we visit Dingley Dell at Christmas, have a couple of scenes from Oliver Twist and drop into The Old Curiosity Shop (a rather odd piece, but a chance to see McMillan’s malevolent Quilp and Evie Guttridge’s sweet Nell). Performances range from the realistic (King’s splendid Scrooge, Kneller’s brooding Fagin) to the entertainingly ridiculous.
The ridiculous parts often fall to the women in the cast. Guttridge, Alice Gold and Hannah Levy begin with The Three Gossips, introducing the audience to Mr. Dickens, Gold and Levy go way over the top as Bumble and Mrs Corney and all three unite again for Dickens’ Couples, a really clever re-working of a reference in an article in Household Words to the different types of couple, set to The Twelve Days of Christmas. Guttridge, ever adaptable, spends half the evening playing male parts.
McMillan takes his turn at the piano, there are a couple of other musicians (plus Shaik Jaffer, filling in the odd juvenile) and a few music hall songs and a touch of Gilbert and Sullivan, slightly anachronistically, complete the entertainment.
Runs until 23rd December 2022.
The Reviews Hub Score
Very jolly
