Ah, Christmas theatre! Doesn't it warm the cockles of your heart? One minute you're yelling: "He's behind you!" The next you're watching well-fed actors making the Victorian poor look as picaresque as a charity Christmas card scene.
I rather doubt the Victorian poor had the energy to do as much singing and dancing as goes on here. There's much that recalls Dickens' better known A Christmas Carol in this story of good-hearted Toby Veck, whose meagre plate of tripe so disagrees with him and the church bells so invade his dreams that he witnesses the terrible misfortunes that could befall his family and friends in the future: prostitution, gin, murder and long lingering deaths of the body and soul.
The Vecks should be renamed the Glums. This is not exactly a jolly family show, although all comes well enough in the end for another little song and dance. The music by John O'Hara is in fact rather appealing.
Although published after A Christmas Carol, this is not half as much fun; nor does it make half as good theatre. In Carol, Scrooge's visions of the Spirit of Christmas teach him and transform him, but here, Veck is already a good man who loves his family and invites strangers into his house. The alderman and gentry, preaching to the poor but doing nothing to help them, seem more deserving of the nightmares. A version that made the realities of life for the Victorian poor rather more real would have more punch, but who would buy a ticket for that at Christmas?
The cast play it straight and well, and Gareth Machin's production makes excellent use of the space. But as the calamities pile up on Toby Veck you long to put the poor man out of his misery.
· Until January 1. Box office: 020-7620 3494.
