A Christmas Carol

The supreme theatricality of this Old Vic production sweeps the audience along with it into a state of giddy happiness.  Above the stage and into the theatre there are hundreds of lights, the glittering lanterns and flickering candles of London streets.  On stage, the whole cast – some of whom are musicians too – all in Victorian dress of long black coats and dresses, top hats and bonnets – sing and create patterns and dances charged with energy.  Chris Nightingale’s music is familiar, a touch nostalgic, but just that bit different – and it connects directly with the audience.  Rob Howell’s design is beautifully suggestive rather than specific.  The constant flow of images and music, with strong performances by supporting Australian cast and by Owen Teale’s powerful presence at the heart, are what tells – or retells – Dickens’ original story of 1843. 

In its previous productions, this A Christmas Carol has won five Tony Awards and it’s not difficult to see why.

Matthew Warchus, who conceived and then directed the original show, understands perfectly the creation of spectacle that in turn creates emotion.  Here, the clear, clean emphasis is almost completely on the Christmas virtues of generosity, family, and good cheer.  Except for some lines in the familiar carols (‘…Jesus Christ Our Saviour born on Christmas Day…’) religion is absent or implicit, leaving the show to be inclusive of all believers and non-believers as demonstrated by the fact that ‘Christmas’ (minus Christ) has been taken up and is celebrated all over the world. 

Clearly, audiences want to be swept up in these heart-warming emotions and want to believe in the transformation of the mean and heartless miser Scrooge into a generous benefactor to all.

Jack Thorne’s adaptation suggests an awareness of what’s needed to help us believe – and he targets any doubts with pointed economy.  He – or perhaps Warchus – makes the Ghosts (apart from Marley) all women and so they are more tough love teachers than threatening punishers.  The Ghost of Christmas Past (a great performance from Debra Lawrence) takes Scrooge to his childhood where the sensitive, imaginative boy (Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward), loved by his lively sister Fan (Aisha Aidara), is set on the path to money-obsessed miser by his cruel but impecunious father. 

Thorne emphasises Belle (Sarah Morrison) the daughter of young Scrooge’s good employer Fezzwig (Grant Piro) who would make Scrooge his partner. Belle is the woman Scrooge loved – and who loved him - but whom he lost in his pursuit of money and status.  Thorne even includes a scene in the Present between Belle and Scrooge and makes of it a key turning point in Scrooge’s realisation of having taken the wrong path all his life.  The scene – at Belle’s front door, a threshold now he can never cross - makes the story more intimate, more personal than Dickens’ ‘shock and rage on witnessing the deprivation and hardship around him’ and the usual sentimental emphasis on the Cratchit family and Tiny Tim.

Such is the positivity and warm embrace of the storytelling, and the skill and talent with which it is delivered, that we might almost overlook Dickens’ sentimentality and his naïve version of charity and economics.  If we step back and resist just a little the emphases of Thorne’s adaptation and the power of the acting, especially the heartfelt, layered performance by Owen Teale, Scrooge’s transformation is still just as unconvincing as ever. 

But believing is seeing, and all that said, there is no denying that this production works a treat.  The audience is swept up in its story and its emotions.  It reminds us (perhaps painlessly) that we could be better people and that there are ways that that could happen.  It asserts that hard-hearted people can be redeemed and changed. 

In these straightened times, when – as Owen Teale tells the audience in a post curtain speech, a pitch for the charity FairShare – 3.7 million Australians live in poverty, individual acts of kindness and generosity – like those the changed Scrooge makes – can make an important difference.

Michael Brindley

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Photographer: Jeff Busby