Unlike one of my colleagues, I rather rate Dickens’ literary output (while condemning his attitude to women) but have a general suspicion of Mark Gatiss: his collaborations with Steven Moffat, which saw the pair commit crimes of adaptation against Sherlock and Dracula, appears to have imbued both with an overconfidence in their own cleverness and a love of a limp last-minute plot twist.
Nevertheless, a few years after Jack Thorne revived A Christmas Carol for the Old Vic, fellow screenwriter Gatiss took a stab at making it a more grim and spooky affair.
It’s now back for a third run at Alexandra Palace, which is a glorious setting for a Victorian ghost tale. The high ceilings and extremely deep stage that goes all the way to the brickwork back wall is used to great effect when the ghosts start lining up pay the cheapskate Ebenezer Scrooge a festive visit. This is a slick production with a solid cast, and each vignette of holiday cheer or uncheer is rendered on stage like a gorgeous Victorian postcard.
Matthew Cottle is a sympathetic Scrooge, more of a scatty old coot than a real villainous money-lender. Neil Morrissey rattles his chains with convincing damnation as Marley. Bob Cratchit, the poor-but-happy father of Tiny Tim, often cuts a rather grovelling figure, but Henry Davis is such a dreamboat in the role you’d happily risk cholera to partake of his Christmas goose.
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Gatiss’s version adds a little origin story for Marley’s death, taking Dickens’ opening line — “Marley was dead to begin with” — entirely literally. Marley keels over at his desk after a little call-and-response ‘bah’ and ‘humbug’ with his partner Scrooge about not wanting to let the staff have a day off over Christmas. It’s a fun touch.
The ghost of Christmas Past is a puckish mischief maker, played with relish by Grace Daly with her natural Irish accent. Christmas Present (Mark Theodore) is the traditional “jolly Giant” arriving on a throne and sprinkling delight from his horn. Future is a gliding dementor-like shroud that is — surprise! — Marley again. Also, Scrooge sends the Cratchits an unplucked, uncooked giant turkey as his Christmas gift. If I was Mrs Cratchit, I’d still want to wring his neck for lumping me with so much prep work on Christmas bloody morning. She’ll have to debone it just to get it in their tiny oven!
The aforementioned limp plot twists abound here, too. Yes, there’s a last-second surprise with the Narrator character you can see coming a mile away. No, it adds literally nothing to the show except trying to make the script look clever and the audience unobservant. Keeping Scrooge as the invisible-to-the-action ghost at his own feast is novel-accurate, but has the unfortunate effect of making it appear to the audience that a grubby old man in a nightcap is perving on the action. Thorne’s version, with the Scrooge actor becoming a player in his own past, is far more interesting.
The set design is glorious, with towering stacks of Scrooge’s files shaping London streets full of smog and lurking danger, as well as ‘Victorian style’ special effects by John Bulleid that sometimes work, sometimes don’t. The problem is mainly that, well over a century on, theatrical effects have come on so far that a few projections, mysteriously ringing bells and jump scare flashbangs don’t really chill the bones.
As a final note on London’s current crop of Christmas Carolling, it’s curious that both productions have cast a Black actor as Scrooge’s lost love Belle. While Bridgerton-style race-blind casting for period pieces is long overdue for the stage, I do think we could go further than the love interest silo. Let some non-white actors have a go at Scrooge, for once!
A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story at Alexandra Palace, until 4 January, christmascarolonstage.co.uk
