How are your fah-lah-lahs? Not Les Dawson’s double entendre enquiry into the well-being of Ray Barraclough’s nether regions, but a cheerful Andy Clark as Bob Cratchit cajoling the audience into a pre-show medley of carols which are brought to an abrupt and bah humbug halt by Benny Young’s curmudgeonly Scrooge.

In a bold reimaging rather than a faithful reproduction of his 2014 sell-out show, exquisitely adapted by Neil Bartlett, director Dominic Hill utilises the full length and breadth of designer Rachael Canning’s expansive wooden set by reaching out to and reeling in the audience on three sides of the reconfigured Tramway 1 through gentle interaction and convivial breaking of the fourth wall.

Behind which, in a high chair and under a single light bulb which he pockets and re-screws into the bedside lamp of his gloomy abode, Young is every bit as secretive and solitary as an oyster as Dickens’ wonderfully descriptive text dictates. Each bah humbug and sharp look marked with a nuanced shade of miserliness as he moves nimbly through the past, present and future worlds of the three ghosts.

The most memorable being the foreboding phantom at the end of Act One who emerges from the deep to point a bony finger towards an ominous coffin. One of several scary moments which, judging by the odd whimper and impromptu exit, some younger audience members might find unnerving.

But that is more a compliment than a criticism for Bartlett and Hill never shy away from the darker elements of poverty and greed, selfishness and cruelty, which blighted the lives of so many slum-dwellers in Victorian London in much the same way that inequality and austerity has widened the gap between the many and the few today.

Decrease the surplus population? Have they no workhouses? A demonisation of “scroungers” and “shirkers” which is alive and kicking in the Disunited Kingdom.

On the flip side, there is joviality and joy in abundance by the excellent ten-strong ensemble, all of whom contribute to the enchanting puppetry and mood-shaping soundscape of composer Nikola Kodjabashia with meticulous glee. With John O’Mahony’s drunken pawnbroker Old Joe an Ubuesque personification of Scrooge’s grotesque interior.

A five golden-ringed production which reminds us that it is never too late to change and that we should reach out to our fellow human beings, particularly those struggling at this time of year, because, in the words of the Ghost of Christmas Present, our “time upon the globe is very brief”.

Peter Callaghan
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