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A Christmas Carol

Arts Theatre, West End
From: Thursday, 8th December 2011
To: Saturday, 14 January 2012

Our Review: Your Reviews:

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Synopsis

A Christmas Carol is the most famous book Charles Dickens ever wrote and one of the most daring. As the Ghosts spirit Scrooge from his past to his present to his future, Dickens plunges the reader cinematically from the miser's dank and creaking house to riotous festivities, from cosy hearths to graveyards. And all the time the author's voice, tender, savage, magisterial, is present.

In this bicentennial production, Simon Callow and director Tom Cairns, have created a work of total story-telling: hilarious, heart-breaking, visionary, a celebration of goodness, a plea for justice and a promise of redemption.

Simon Callow, one of the nation's best loved stage and screen actors, returns to Dickens after huge international success with The Mystery of Charles Dickens (West End and Broadway), Dr Marigold and Mr Chops and Being Shakespeare.

Our Review:

13 December 2011

Simon Callow starring in a one-man performance of A Christmas Carol is a premise that could invite some uncertainty.

The story is one we perhaps know too well, and Callow is known for an extravagance that could overwhelm an already caricatured narrative. It is advisable, however, to lay your misgivings at the door; this is a modest, heart-warming rendition of Dicken’s classic, bringing new life to the tale with a markedly gentle amiability.

The performance recalls the best of bedtime stories. Think of Callow as a kindly grandfather, perhaps slightly inebriated, but relaying events with such a stout affection for Dicken’s work that the audience is compelled to listen.

Beginning to the echoes of "God Bless you Merry Gentlemen", Callow moves before a foggy backdrop of twisting houses and the ever-imposing face of a church clock. The phantoms of Marley and the Christmas Spirits voice their messages through him, helped by reso...

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