A Carol that tugs at your heart
A Christmas Carol
Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford-upon-avon
David Edgar gave the RSC one of the biggest hits in its history with his eight-and-a-half-hour adaptation of Nicholas
Nickleby (1980), which set a benchmark for ensemble-based theatre. Now, 40 years on, he has set to work on A Christmas Carol. Even if the result can’t be expected to match that award-winning magnum opus, it’s still a magnificent achievement.
His simple stroke of inspiration is to, well, look at the source of Dickens’s inspiration, and permit the author to haunt the theatrical goings-on. As with Nickleby, Edgar delights in showing us the tale being assembled before our eyes. And in contrast to the melodious and decorous version currently at the Old Vic, this account more trenchantly relays the social context of Dickens’s Ghost Story of Christmas.
The opening scene finds Nicholas Bishop’s bright-eyed novelist discussing with his friend and editor John Forster (Beruce Khan) the shaming 1843 commission into “the physical and moral condition of the children and young persons employed in mines and manufactures”. He wants to write a tract; Forster argues that a pleasing Christmas fiction would achieve more – hey presto, snow starts to fall and we see Phil Davis’s scowling, harrumphing, furtive and lonely anti-hero – christened on the spot (“Scratch… Screw?” mulls Dickens; “-dge”, Forster adds).
Rachel Kavanaugh’s fluid, continually impressive production, dominated by a towering soot-dark tenement courtyard, pulls out all the stops in terms of eye-catching detail: spectral faces form in fiery plumes and foggy mists, ghouls lurk under Ebenezer’s four-poster bed, and there’s even the neat trick of the old miser’s hand appearing to pass through the stomach of his dead partner Marley. Theatrical playfulness abounds – perhaps overly so in the handful of anachronistic references to contemporary social media apps and the passing ribbing of our foreign secretary. Yet even as we gallop towards picture-book festive cosiness in the form of bustling street-scenes, rousing carols and merrymaking jigs – the Spirit of Christmas Past taking the first shaken, stirred Scrooge back to the gambolling pleasures of the Fezziwigs’ party – there are reining-in moments. Dickens – who steps in at points to play Scrooge’s younger self, and identifies with the bleak experience of Bob Cratchit’s son Tiny Tim – interjects chilling lines from that 1843 report during the appearance of those symbolic children Want and Ignorance, who stagger towards us surrounded by an army of benighted souls. Even the section referring to the downtrodden mining community is incorporated, as Scrooge gets a bird’s eye view of Victorian England on a flying carpet. And we’re further threatened with being deprived of a fairy-tale ending.
This isn’t the action of spoilsports, but of theatre-makers honouring the material. Davis’s final transformation from waspish recluse – obsessed with his sums – into a figure of skipping gaiety and generosity is all the more poignant for our being aware that it’s a fable – that redemption requires graft, and often stinging regret comes too late. A wonderful, thoughtful night.
Until Feb 4. Tickets: 01789 403493; rsc.org.uk