A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic 2025: The ultimate ghostly tale to warm even the coldest cockles

Christmas requires ritual and tradition to get us through the cold winter months, and Jack Thorne’s version of A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic is one of the finer ones.

Performed in the round under a canopy of flickering lanterns, it transports you through the dank streets of a Victorian London haunted by poverty, to the bedroom of Charles Dickens’ infamous miser who requires multiple ghostly encounters to (re)discover the reason for the season.

Many erstwhile character actors have taken on the ragged mantle of Ebenezer Scrooge since the annual revival began at the Old Vic with Rhys Ifans in 2017. Since then the festive boards have been trodden by Stephen Tompkinson in 2018, Paterson Joseph in 2019, Andrew Lincoln (livestreamed in the 2020 Covid shutdown), Stephen Mangan in 2021, Owen Teale in 2022, Christopher Eccleston for 2023, and John Simm in 2024.

Paul Hilton (Ebenezer Scrooge) in A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic (2025) (Manuel Harlan)

This year it’s the turn of Paul Hilton (Slow Horses) as a spritely Scrooge, his sinewy frame fizzing with frustrated energy. You feel cold and hungry looking at him in his ragged velvet smoking jacket, clutching his ever-growing lanterns of self-awareness closer as if seeking warmth. Hilton flits nimbly between the comedic moments of stroppily refusing to be haunted and the tear-jerking moments he comforts is younger, purer self.

The whole cast is luminous in their carolling and very handy with the handbells. Although, extra flowers should be given for Tanisha Spring’s captivating turn as Belle, the love that Scrooge left waiting to long in a futile pursuit of wealth, and to Alastair Parker for her bumbling father Fezziwig, who vainly attempts to hide his devastation at his young apprentice’s ambition only to be hounded to death over his generosity in giving even London’s poorest a decent burial.

Thorne’s adaptation hinges on a reading of Scrooge’s father as a cruel and abusive indebted drunk. Hilton plays him less as a young man who became too obsessed with success, but rather someone so encrusted with fear of debt he retreats into the armour of the feared debt collector.

Tanisha Spring (Belle) in A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic (2025) (Manuel Harlan)

Rob Howell’s clever stage design sees Scrooge to stash his money boxes and safes that double as furniture into holes the floor, like a deranged squirrel. But his hoarded gold will only rot, while ghostly light seeps through cracks in the floorboards.

Christmas is a time for ghost stories, and any good adaptation of Dickens’ Carol needs to be appropriately spooky without being too terrifying for younger audience members. Having the ghosts be chiding women in red and pink rags — and echo of Scrooge’s beloved sister Fan’s homemade gift to her brother — with bright metallic eye strips makes them authoritative rather than creepy, their buggies of burdens growing from a toy pram to the size of a hearse. I will happily admit a thrilling chill ran down my spine when Marley arrives with his clanking chain in the first act, and the ensemble heralding the final ghost in the second in a lockstep dance with faces obscured by veils.

After the dark night of Scrooge’s soul comes the joyful catharsis of Christmas Day, in an irresistible pageant of delights. Thorne, the playwright behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and this year’s hit Adolescence, is a genius at producing an emotional response in an audience without resorting to parlour tricks.

Stuart Neal (Marley) in A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic (2025) (Manuel Harlan)

There is audience involvement, if not participation, from the jump. Mince pies from street hawkers on arrival, then satsumas and snowballs whizzing through the air. A giant lantern swings from the rafters like a demented pendulum. When Scrooge commandeers his nephew’s Christmas dinner for the poor-but-happy Cratchit, bedsheets unravel from the balcony to the stalls to funnel potatoes, links of sausages must be passed hand over hand, and sprouts parachute down from the gods.

And there is snow, so much snow. A veritable blizzard rains down upon the audience, swirling enchantingly under the lights, although the distinctive smell when it settles on you will also trigger scent memories of foam parties for any former ravers in the audience. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be pelted with vegetables. Even the heartless Scrooge’s in our current government couldn’t fail to have their cockles thoroughly toasted by the end.

A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic, until 10 January 2026, oldvictheatre.com