“What is Christmas
but a time for paying bills with no money?” I hear that sister! But
Charlie Dickens doesn’t; and so begins his mission to fill the
miserly hearts of local punters with the spirit of Christmas.
For Dickens, as for many of us, Christmas is a time for storytelling. You’re likely to have heard the nativity story to death, been exposed to some bastardised fairytales in the name of ‘pantomime’; and heard your mum tell the story of your grandmother buying her a metal scourer thinking it was a festive hair scrunchy, or maybe that’s just my family. The framing for this particular version of A Christmas Carol sees Dickens pitch his merry tale to his disheartened publisher in an attempt to convince him that if A Christmas Carol can cheer up the crowd at King’s Head, it’s worth publishing despite the literary flops he’s been turning out lately. As well as this being utter bollocks, since Dickens was a well established, wealthy author by the time he wrote this classic, it’s difficult to give a toss about Dickens as a character. Historical inaccuracies aside, Nigel Lister who plays Dickens, seemed to win over the crowd, bounding up and down the aisles and getting us to marvel at Dickens as an extraordinary storyteller as well as the writer we already know. The trope seems unnecessary for such a classic story but it creates room for new comedy in this moral fable.
The astoundingly multi-talented cast is the most striking thing about this musical. They act, they sing, they dance and play an array of instruments. Particular credit is due to the clarinet playing pianist Oliver Paterson (Young Scrooge) whose voice is going to take him far. Violinist Flora Spencer’s tear jerking performance as Belle impressed the unsuspecting Scrooge I took along as did the outstanding flautist. The cast of over twenty seems too big for this eighty seat pub theatre but they're the reason we're so easily taken back to the public house atmosphere of yore i.e. any time before the smoking ban. They sit amongst the audience, crowd the piano and double bass on stage, spill down the aisles and pop out from back stage with surprising regularity. Credit to them, this type of immersion theatre keeps us on our toes. It makes the good bits more festive and the scary bits more spine chilling; especially when the underworld ghouls decide that everyone needs to be warned about the consequences of miserliness in the hereafter.
This production will
split the crowds. The lovers will enjoy the converse, sprightly ghost
of Christmas past who brims with the positivity that Scrooge had as a
boy. The haters will wonder who on earth decided she should be
Cinderella, his literary childhood companion? And who seconded the
motion that Tiny Tim should trump the looming dementor type figure as
the ghost of Christmas future?
The puppetry is hit and
miss but mostly a hit. Particularly the scenes where Scrooge is
overwhelmed by his otherworldly experience. The play lags in places,
especially at the Cratchits. We know Tiny Tim is ill and that he's
the apple of his dad's eye, but do we really care that much? My
concentration strays a little when Mr and Mrs Cratchit share their
woes and then suddenly there's a lighthouse behind me and singing in
the aisles. I've no clue what's going on but the music is great and I
gather it's something to do with who decides who lives and dies in a
Victorian Feed-The-World kind of way.
The Ghost of Christmas Past (Kilke Van Buren) and Scrooge (Jonathan Battersby)
The singing in this production is stunning. It's haunting, it's romantic, it's very festive and will take you right back to Christmas assemblies at school. Scrooge (Jonathan Battersby) gets a good bit of singing too and his extended dialogue with each of his ghosts, makes his turn around believable and sincere. Battersby is one of the best things about this play, his performance would make even Dickens proud.
A witty script an
astonishingly talented cast, and a fantastic venue make this the
perfect injection of festivity to kick off Christmas and will
definitely help prolong that festive feeling well into January.
Photo Credit: Simon Purse
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