5 hours Ago By Louisa Saunders
The glorious thing about Christmas traditions is that we do not see them forming, yet once they are established we warmly acknowledge their annual appearance. Just as with matters familial so with the theatre: the Old Vic’s production of the Dickens yuletide behemoth, in a version by Jack Thorne , is now in its eighth year and is a firm fixture in the capital’s Christmas landscape. Its annual USP is glossy casting for the part of Scrooge; last year gloried in a terrific turn by Christopher Eccleston and now John Simm dons the Victorian top hat of a grouchy Womble.
At the risk of coming over all, well, Scrooge about it, Matthew Warchus’s production looks a little under-loved this year, as if going through the festive motions rather than feeling them deeply and profoundly. Whereas Eccleston guided us expertly through every step on the miserly misanthrope’s hard-won journey to redemption, the trajectory that Simm traces is far more perfunctory. It is a challenge to believe he has truly absorbed the life lessons taught him by the three fearsome female ghosts, although there is one memorable exchange with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
“This was not my fault!” bellows Scrooge when confronted with her bleak prophecies of suffering. “Then whose was it?” she hollers back with equal vehemence. Thorne’s slick adaptation, which unfolds on a cruciform stage decorated with three portentously empty doorframes, doesn’t afford much time for character building for Bob Cratchit (Rob Compton) and his family, which becomes more problematic if Scrooge is not at full strength.
Thorne is at pains to emphasise how a lonely childhood and tough father inculcated in the boy a profound fear of debt, which resulted in early diligence curdling into hard-hearted avarice. Read Next Wolves on Road is saved by its fizzing energy The fluid ensemble, bedecked in top hats and black greatcoats, is well drilled in its choral speaking, which adds weight and emphasis to Dickens’s mighty words. Scrooge, we are reminded at the start of this eventful Christmas Eve, was “as solitary as an oyster” and the phrase hangs in the air under a ceiling full of tiny carriage lanterns.
The great delight of this production (apart from free mince pies pre-show) is the music; composer and arranger Christopher Nightingale truly offers the gift that keeps on giving even after eight years. There are haunting arrangements of famous carols – listen carefully to their poetic words of hope and humanity – as well as hand-bell arrangements for the entire company. The purity and clarity of those notes is a reminder that, as we embark upon the festive hurtle once more, the message of this story written in 1843 remains as fresh and pertinent as ever.
To 4 January (0344 871 7628, oldvictheatre.com ).
