A very nice take on why Scrooge is Mr Mean...
. . . and a hammy Rhys Ifans will get everyone into the festive spirit
YULETIDE has arrived early at London’s Old Vic where they hand out mince pies and satsumas to theatregoers arriving for this cosily user- friendly version of A Christmas Carol.
Scrooge is here in the form of Rhys Ifans, all comically-awry hairdo and faded red cloak. Penniless Bob Cratchit is played by rugged, likeable John Dagleish.
More is made of Scrooge’s cruel father, his sister Little Fan (Melissa Allan) and his youthful romance with Belle (Erin Doherty) than is normally the case with stage adaptations.
How decent of writer Jack Thorne to try to understand mean- spirited Ebenezer. When your theatre’s main sponsor is a bank, perhaps it is wise to go easy on a voracious money-lender.
Throw in some decidedly unfrightening ghosts and it all makes for a less dank-fingered evening than one might expect. At times this could almost be a Richard Curtis show rather than something based on Charles Dickens, whose public was less hooked on sugar.
As a child I was properly spooked by A Christmas Carol, but I can’t see many youngsters having nightmares as a result of the benign phantoms seen here.
Director Matthew Warchus has transformed The Old Vic’s space; a traverse catwalk extending the whole way through the stalls so that, for instance, poor Marley can drag an impressive 15 yards’ worth of deathly chains up to Scrooge’s office door. Some audience members are seated up in what is normally the stage area and much of the action occurs, raised, in the middle of the crowd.
The evening opens with handbells, a personal bugbear of mine. I can’t abide the simpering smiles they adopt when ding- donging the ruddy things. But that’s the Scrooge in me. Sorry. Above hang various lanterns which, in Christopher Nightingale’s lighting design, pulsate at auspicious moments.
Although the costumes are period, the language has been inoffensively modernised and there are minimalist touches such as imagined doorways. Mr Warchus judiciously mixes tradition and surreal innovation, not least in a scene when the reformed Scrooge gathers Christmas grub to take to the Cratchits.
This involves some limited pantostyle crowd participation — a fine wobbly jelly — and the arrival of plastic spuds via chutes, plus pretend sprouts by mini parachute. Whoosh goes a goose on a zipwire.
MR IFANS gives us a middle-aged, energetic Scrooge, at times almost hammed up like an Alan rickman Sheriff of Nottingham.
I could have taken him a few notches more nasty, but that might have been out of kilter in this more emollient, sentimental approach to the fable.
Debt-collector Scrooge realises that he is chalking up his own eternal debts by being so misanthropic — but it’s really the fault of his drunken dad.
Tiny Tim is being played by a rotating quartet of children with reallife problems. If that accentuates the emotion of the evening, so do several beautifully played, English-folksy snippets of Christian carols.
I hope it is not giving away a surprise if I disclose that there is a delightful blizzard towards the end while the cast sing See Amid The Winter’s Snow.
A charity request announcement at the curtain call interrupts the emotional reverie, but families will luxuriate in this inventive, unashamedly seasonal show.