Christmas Carol at the Old Vic Review

Posted on December 7, 2022

Listen, let’s not beat around the bush. I am one of those people that adores the Muppet’s Christmas Carol. As a teacher, I genuinely think it’s one of the most textually accurate adaptations out there. Plus it is just so much fun to watch Michael Caine act his heart out in front of a bunch of rat puppets.

But I digress. As a lover of spooky season, I am thrilled to revel in the tradition of a Winter ghost story. M R James stories are my favourite, but A Christmas Carol and the Woman in Black are close seconds. So I was very excited to see the remounted version of the Old Vic’s sell-out production.

And reader… I was disappointed.

Let’s start with the positives: It was delightful to see Owen Teale on stage (Alliser Thorne for any GoT fans). The Old Vic adaptation really lent into the fact that Scrooge is redeemed – it was a tried and true redemption story, very clearly. I thought that the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as the cloaked ensemble was visually striking and particularly eerie. I loved it. I also liked the in-the-round staging was engaging.

The bad: The script. Yikes oh yikes. It dripped with saccharine tweeness. Owen Teale was always a little too nice and human – you could smell his transformation a mile away and the Tiny Tim moments were dull in their obvious cloyingness. I do not want to see scenes with Scrooge’s alcoholic, abusive father. I do not need to see adult Scrooge’s attempts to win Belle back. All of this served to completely undermind Scrooge’s character arc. And I certainly do not need to see the ghosts all return for a “it was all a dream”esque ending. There are undoubtedly going to be a lot of strange GCSE essays this year.

I personally thought the handbell playing at the end was underwhelming (this is all subjective, of course). And I absolutely loathed the audience participation in parachuting in sprouts and sliding potatoes in through the audience for the Crachitt family feast. But maybe I myself am an old Scrooge.

Bah-humbug.

However, if you want to catch the show for yourself it runs until the 7th of January. The run time is 2 hours including a 20 minute interval.

I wish I had seen Adrian Edmondson’s Scrooge at the RSC instead.