There is an extraordinary moment towards the end of A Christmas Carol. Jim Broadbent’s Scrooge proves his change of heart by making a pass at the stalls. He steps out of the pop-up theatre that frames the action in cardboard scarlet curtains and gilt proscenium arch. He walks towards the audience. He picks out someone and tells her that he loves her. Surprised at himself, he repeats the words, trying them out for size. And again. He is becoming real. It could so easily have been maudlin. Yet such is Broadbent’s relaxed power as a performer that he produces only beams of recognition.
This adaptation, written by Patrick Barlow (The 39 Steps) and directed by Improbable Theatre’s Phelim McDermott, remakes Dickens’s story with a 21st-century slant. Scrooge is a banker. He does not need to sneer at the poor: his job does that for him. He demands his 100% interest rates with rational calm: he is only asking for the market rates. Even here, kindliness sprouts out from every tuft of Broadbent’s very tufty hair. All along, it is obvious that he is not beastly, but damaged.
There is very little suspense. Scrooge suddenly becomes the decent chap we all knew he was. Barlow and McDermott try to get round the rather shambolic narrative by staging it as a play within a play. That doesn’t quite come off, but it enables some magical theatrical excursions and Improbabilities.
Small cellophane ghosts skim through the air like translucent tadpoles. A maxi-spectre – three spooks in one black cloak – seems to expand infinitely. Comic fake legs speed Scrooge around the world. Tiny Tim really is minuscule: a wooden puppet with one leg cut off at the knee, who is stalwart at making his own way on crutches over the table top.
Four actors play all the subsidiary parts. They speak dialogue that is not so much Dickensian-rich as Barlow-bright: “I can’t quite catch it, Cratchit.” Samantha Spiro brings her all-out crackle to a rosy-faced young wife and a panto-dame Spirit of Christmas. Tom Pye’s design is itself part character, part author, as when Scrooge is suddenly shown cut off from the bustle of action, alone in the dusty wings.
