It really does feel like Christmas is coming once this sumptuous Dickens adaptation arrives at the Old Vic each year. Jack Thorne’s version of the familiar tale is richly textured and shamelessly emotive, full of song and heart. This year, a grizzle-headed Paterson Joseph takes over Scrooge duties from predecessors Rhys Ifans and Steven Tomlinson, bringing a hint of derangement to the miser’s money-mania and his eventual conversion. “He may be ill,” says Scrooge’s nephew of his reborn uncle. “He may be happy.” With Joseph, it could be both.
Matthew Warchus’s production is pleasingly rooted in the nearby streets of Southwark and Lambeth and has lost none of its layered richness. It’s staged in the round in an auditorium covered in lanterns, and achieves the rare feat of linking the stalls to the balconies when the Cratchits’ Christmas dinner is magically flown in.
Chunks of narrative are spoken like a Greek chorus by the ensemble, who also harmonise beautifully in the many carols that stud the action and prove themselves dab hands at bellringing. The theatre is full of wondrous noise. It feels invidious to single out performances apart from Scrooge, but Myra McFadyen, Gloria Onitiri and Melissa Allan are bracingly effective as the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.
Designer Rob Howell devises expressionist touches such as the chains binding Scrooge’s partner Marley to his sins, and the doorframes that close in on Scrooge like a cell. We also get dandruffed with foamy snow, a signature of current Christmas shows across London.
This year’s staging feels shorter and more hard-hitting than the 2017 original and 2018 reprise, though that may be my imagination. Perhaps current revelations about child poverty have made Thorne’s plea for charity and humanity feel sharper. Afterwards, ushers collected for Coram Beanstalk, the charity for disadvantaged children. It looked like people were giving generously.
Until Jan 18 (0844 871 7628, oldvictheatre.com)
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