Only an ice cold heart could fail to melt at this festive tale
Scrooge the Musical Leicester Curve
Simon Callow was bang on the money about A
Christmas Carol in his adroit and succinct 2012 biography of Charles Dickens: “No theatre, of course, could ever fully realise Dickens’s spectacle… no cinema has achieved the freedom and fluidity of the ribbon of dream that Dickens unfolds… It is an almost magical performance, in which Dickens conjures up the scenes he requires then extinguishes them”.
Those who have devoured the story, just as they did in their rapt thousands in 1843, and let its rich figgy pudding of phantasmagorical images digest in their system, sending shivers of terror, intimations of mortality and pangs of conscience up the spine, may well find that the musical
Scrooge looks like thin gruel. In fact, there were unkind moments watching this industrious revival by Nikolai Foster of a show that started life on the big screen in 1970 (with Albert Finney as Ebenezer) before receiving the full theatrical treatment in 1992, when the phrase “a poor man’s Oliver!” came to mind. Too many of Leslie Bricusse’s numbers feel like they’re there to, well, make up the numbers. While that big Cheapside cockney knees-up show-stopper Thank You Very Much is a redeeming treat, it nevertheless runs on for so long that you’re almost tempted to shout: “Thank you very much, that’s quite enough.” And there’s nothing in the lyrics or book – saving those lines filched from the original – that matches the melancholy wit of Dickens’s narration: “No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he.”
Truth to tell, as the avaricious anti-hero, Jasper Britton is stern, snarling but insufficiently skeletal – beneath those whitebearded chops lurks the sort of fifty-something face that’s more cherubic choirboy than foul-tempered killjoy. Compared with Tommy Steele, who has oft haunted the part with a fairground-bright grin, Britton at least allows the ghost of a smile to creep more stealthily into view as the action winds from solitary childhood and aborted youthful romance past to the infectious good cheer of Christmas Present. But I wasn’t with him all the way; it’s a competent, committed performance but I’m not sure it’s a cherishable one.
So why has my inner Father Christmas won out over my bah humbugging inner Scrooge? Because the story, so compelling, remains intact, and the generosity of spirit called for in the book is embodied in Foster’s opulent production, dominated by a high iron bridge, populated by well-drilled urchins (with superb choreography all round from Stephen Mear) and reaching its apotheosis in a vast wraithlike Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that might have escaped from Hogwarts.
Only an ice-cold heart would fail to melt to sentimental slush at the old-fashioned gaiety of the festive scenes, and the plaintive warbling of Tiny Tim. “Love While You Can” runs one song – and that’s as true of this show as it is of life: best not to look a gift-horse, however fit for the knacker’s yard, in the mouth.