REVIEW – A CHRISTMAS CAROL
by Charles Dickens, adapted by David Holman

The Dukes, Moor Lane, Lancaster
Friday 25 November 2005 – Saturday 7 January 2006

An unmissable part of the Lancaster Christmas Experience

A Christmas Carol, Dicken’s best-loved work from 1843, is often neatly packaged away as a cosy, comfortable treat for children at the festive season.

But there is much more to the story than that. It is also a mordant political parable against poverty, capitalism and greed – and that well before Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867). The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels, which followed two years after A Christmas Carol, perhaps owed not a little to Dickens’ polemic and crusading.

The tale, then, can not only resonate with children, but with adults too. Like most good stories, there is wit, pathos, humour and suspense, and David Holman’s adaptation retains the key elements of the original tale. And Director Robin Belfield (from The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton) uses his vivid imagination and sure-handed technique to translate all these elements into one delightful, moving, glorious spectacle.

Striking visual effects abound, the narrative is staged in a versatile setting, the dialogue sparkles, and the music score is a sheer delight. It’s beautifully sung and played too by an excellent cast. The Dukes must produce a CD of the show’s soundtrack – what a splendid stocking-filler it would make!

I could say so much more about the theatrical and visual aspects of this show, but that would be to give it all away. Suffice it to say that the whole audience, young and old alike, were all enraptured by this fine production.

Despite the harsh realities of early Victorian London, and the struggling conscience of the haunted Scrooge, the overwhelming messages of compassion, care and consideration for others shines beautifully through. This concern would become known as socialism some fifty years after the book came out.

Those messages are still pertinent today – think of the hungry and homeless on our streets in the UK this Christmastide as you recall those two little children Ignorance and Need that Scrooge touchingly embraces. They are, shamefully, still with us ...

Suitable for young and old alike (I was guffawing at the same places as the youngsters sat around me), this production is probably the best Christmas show I have seen since my first experiences of pantomime at the Leeds Empire in the 1950s.

I can recommend it to anyone and everyone without any hesitation. Miss it, and you are missing a real gem.

Copyright © 29 November 2005 Michael Nunn