Brian Blessed serves up a feast for fans as he heaps on the ham
A Christmas Carol
Guildford Shakespeare Company/ Jermyn Street Theatre, online
There are enough Christmas Carols afoot to keep a critic busy year round. I’m not jaded yet. If I could, for instance, get to Liverpool Playhouse (Tier 2) to see Gemma Bodinetz’s swansong show as artistic director, I would. There’s even a version recorded at Dickens’s old Holborn home on Doughty Street that I’ll watch this week, and I hope to revisit my local production in Chipping Norton, starring David Bradley, for it was so damned good. Standing out from the crowd, though, is a must.
Stream the online version of Dickens’s tale presented by Guildford Shakespeare Company – in conjunction with Jermyn Street Theatre – and for your £20 you don’t just get larger-than-life Brian Blessed, 84 going on 14, but Margo from The Good Life: stage and smallscreen doyenne Penelope Keith.
I’d pay good money just to hear Blessed roar “Gordon’s alive!” and Keith to sniff and snap: “No, Jerry!” Understandably enough, neither of these phrases appears in Naylah Ahmed’s adaptation (directed by Natasha Rickman). The two famous faces pop up in pre-recorded segments, integrated with live performances on Zoom, as the Ghosts of Christmas Past (Keith) and Present (Blessed), and their utterances, though not fully faithfully Dickens, wouldn’t have the author turning in his grave.
It’s a shame Blessed couldn’t be wooed to play Scrooge himself. Jim Findley rustles up an air of mild petulance and perturbation as the spirit-harried misanthrope. To his credit as a man, debit as an actor, he exudes too much decency and humanity from the off to convince as a lost soul in need of redemption, or sharpen the edge of a tale blunted through familiarity.
Blessed, by contrast, could – I imagine – be terrifying in a rather bovine way, eating Bob Cratchit for breakfast and conquering Asia
shortly thereafter. I last saw him on stage five years ago playing Lear (a run halted by a dicky ticker, since sorted); what is Scrooge but a festive variant of the king who becomes estranged from all around him and finally sees his folly?
Still, Blessed’s minor-league turn is a treat for his fans. “Look upon me, you have never seen the like of me before,” he amiably thunders, his massive, pumpkin-sized head adorned with a silky turban. Thanks to some nifty – if rudimentary – green-screen wizardry, he teleports about amid clouds of grey smoke, flying, Santa-like, over the world: “What is it you smell? Christmas, man!” Those eyebrows waggle away mechanically as if he were his own Spitting Image puppet. He even whistles Away in a Manger for
good measure. Bless. Complementing his fruity tones and lashings of ham, Keith is to the manner born as a genially reproving Ghost of Christmas Past – clasping her lips together with prayer-like firmness, only to let out unexpectedly wicked grins.
Sporting an outfit of Miss Havisham-like eccentricity – wedding veil included – and filtered with a spectral silver hue, she looks untouched by time as she wags her finger: “Do you not wish to salvage your soul, Ebenezer?”
It’s lovely to see her back on our screens, wafting through computergenerated snow, however hit-andmiss the rest of the show, with its slightly irksome lags during the (separately contributed) dialogue and uneven performances. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. And with the pandemic dragging on, the genre of “Zoom theatre” may well not be all wrapped up by Christmas.
Those eyebrows waggle away as if he were his own ‘Spitting Image’ puppet
Until Dec 27. Tickets: guildfordshakespeare-company.co.uk/ a-christmas-carol