The Tobacco Factory team has a strong track record in Christmas productions that are gimmick-free and highly sensual. This tradition continues with Andy Burden's new take on Dickens's festive cautionary tale, relocated to the Bristol docks and a credit-crunched Christmas. Both the local setting and fiscal topicality - Scrooge, cast as a fat-cat banker, snarls at Cratchett, "You'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation" - give the adaptation a warm vivacity.
Given the intimacy of the space, Burden wisely gives us a Carol in closeup, played in the round, and zooming in on just a corner of a room, or Scrooge's bed, which almost fills the stage. Chris Bianchi's Scrooge is a slow build, played lightly to begin with and resisting easy caricature - you believe him when he barks his miserable asides. Felix Hayes turns in the best performance of the night as the Ghost of Christmas Now: a hilarious, blaxploitation-tinged interpretation, looking like Brian Blessed in a floor-length fur coat and sounding like Barry White.
If this adaptation has a weakness, it is in the realisation of the supernatural shock factor. As if facing the impossibility of the sort of special effects that give the story its flights of fancy, Burden often plays his version for laughs, and it doesn't always work. The cast adopt knowing smirks, as if this is Little Britain does Dickens, for camp renditions of rather forgettable songs. Much more successful is the gothic gloom of the Ghost of Christmas Future, played straight to be as nightmarishly terrifying as possible. There's no doubt that the novel's central message is brought to life, and this is an engaging, charming production that stretches young viewers, but the imaginative journey Dickens takes us on is only intermittently realised.
