Tommy Steele is not the first name which leaps to mind when you think of Scrooge, "secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster" in Dickens's words. But it is not altogether Steele's fault that this makes such a cosily conventional night out: the real blame lies with Leslie Bricusse, whose book, music and lyrics strive to outdo each other in quilted blandness.
Dickens's great mythic tale has buoyancy and anger: just think of Marley's face glimpsed in the door-knocker "like a bad lobster in a dark cellar", or the personification of Ignorance and Want as meagre, ragged children. But there's no rage or strangeness in Bricusse's version, which begins with carols, ends with Scrooge dressed as Santa, and in between is filled with what Pauline Kael, writing of the 1970 movie, dubbed "instantly disposable music". Even the lyrics rarely get beyond anything more adventurous than "I like life, life likes me".
There remains Tommy Steele, who lends Scrooge an arthritic hobble and pinched features without ever persuading you he is Dickens's covetous old sinner. Here transformed into a moneylender, Scrooge dutifully collects debts from Punch and Judy men and soup-sellers. But you feel Steele can't wait to give us a first flash of the famous molars, which comes around 8.10pm. And he seems much happier after Scrooge's transformation, when he can dance around daintily holding the sides of his night-gown between his fingers in the manner of Stanley Holloway's Doolittle. It's an old pro's performance, but not one that remotely suggests the unredeemed Scrooge's withered soul.
The best feature of a dull evening is Paul Kieve's illusions. Marley's Ghost, boomingly personified by Barry Howard, is mysteriously magicked up from behind a door. A chair spins round and there is the crinolined Ghost of Christmas Past. And the future spirit is a draped, hooded, faceless phantom who appears to be 12ft tall and Dickensianly glides along the ground like a mist. Kieve's tricks give the evening a much-needed touch of magic. The rest is verbally lifeless, lyrically inert, musically forgettable. You can't destroy the tale's potent idea of spiritual change: as Peter Ackroyd says, "it is rather as if Dickens had written a religious tract and filled it both with his own memories and all the concerns of the period". But sadly this anodyne version of a great story leaves one's charitable instincts withering on the vine.
· Until January 14. Box office: 0870 890 1108
