A Christmas Carol
Old Vic, London, until January 7
Just as the summer doesn’t officially begin for me until I have sat under the stars at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, so Christmas can’t get under way until I have seen Matthew Warchus’s perennial A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic.
Over the years this enormously popular production has taken on a life of its own. Different in certain respects each time – on this occasion Owen Teale plays Scrooge – but always Jack Thorne’s adaptation keeps to the spirit of the Charles Dickens classic.
Teale inhabits the role of Scrooge, and, a substantially bigger man than his immediate predecessor, Stephen Mangan, his personality fills every nook and cranny of the auditorium.
What is so wonderful about the production is the way it has been pared down to the essence of the book: Thorne’s words, Rob Howell’s set, consisting of little more than four door frames, not a single gesture wasted by a member of the cast or so much as a second the show runs feeling superfluous.
I saw the show this time from the rear stalls, which meant I was facing the main auditorium and I have to say it’s the best vantage point: the sight of such a stunningly beautiful theatre being deluged with fake snow is simply sensational.
Tiny Tim, as ever, steals the show towards the end – Casey-Indigo Blackwood-Lashley, Freddie Marshall-Ellis, Joe Vo Scanlon and Holly Speed take turns playing the role and God bless every one.
There is, of course, a little bit of Scrooge in every one of us – sometimes all too much – and, with more people begging on the streets than ever and our leaders in Westminster still preoccupied with their own careers and agendas, the story has particular resonance this Christmas. The London of Dickens is, for sure, becoming hideously similar to the London of Rishi Sunak: different times, comparable values. Will we ever learn?
