A Christmas Carol – a joyous evening watching Scrooge face up to his demons (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 11 January)

My eyes normally roll when I discover a venue is planning to produce A Christmas Carol. It’s a beast of a book to adapt, with three ghostly visitations, each with numerous scenes to trudge through. Charles Dickens was being paid by the word, and he wrote his serialised stories for a newspaper audience who had to come back each week for another twist in the tale, much like modern day streaming audiences faced with a good show that doesn’t allow for binging.

Marie Jones’ adaptation zips through the story, touching Scrooge with each lesson without waiting around to ram it home. And thankfully the playwright also swerves the temptation to go full tilt and preach against all capitalists, making the story all the more powerful and personal. Switching the action to Belfast could have been a risk, but her skill with writing in the vernacular makes it feel natural rather than a gimmick. We appreciate the reflections that someone is “as dour as a deathwatch drummer”!

The Lyric’s production is framed through the lens that the audience have turned up to watch The Pottinger Players presenting their version of A Christmas Carol. So as we enter the auditorium, the cast are assembling, tying on their aprons, ‘lighting’ the footlights, tuning their instruments, joshing with audience. The two main minstrels engage us with a bit of cringe-free community singing, while another cast member rushes around the stalls and the balconies looking for a missing turkey. One gentleman admitted he didn’t like Christmas, rewarded with the retort that “we’ve got the perfect cure for you”!

Stuart Marshall’s intricate set uses a forced perspective to create a Dickensian space between Pottinger’s Entry and Joy’s Entry. The slim fronts of houses and businesses pivot around to create the internal spaces. Everything seems to glide effortlessly. Each element has two or three purposes. It’s rich, atmospheric and unfussy. Characters appear out of nowhere, peering around corners, squeezing through gaps, popping out of trapdoors.

As the action begins, a polyphonic humming of Silent Night hints that music will be important to the story with Garth McConaghie’s sound design blending recordings, effects and live playing. Katie Shortt (flute, accordion and lots of percussion) and Conor Hinds (a chest-mounted violincello) are joined by other cast members who bring a trumpet, tambourine and more into the mix. There’s even a little dancing (choreographer: Fleur Mellor).

We learn that Jacob Marley is “tatty bread” (dead) and that Ebeneezer Scrooge “carries his own cold with him”. Soon we’ve met bubbly nephew Fred (played by a joyful Richard Clements) whose fulsome invitation to Christmas dinner is not unexpectedly declined. Matthew Forsythe plays Bob Cratchit, loyal to the core, even in the face of his employer’s miserable thriftiness. Jayne Wisener’s Mrs Cratchit is much more cynical and unforgiving, running the household and tending to her three children on Bob’s pittance of a wage. Mary Moulds (wearing great pigtails) plays daughter Martha and Jonny Grogan is Peter. Ellen Whitehead is superb as Tiny Tim, a chip of the father’s block.

As you’d expect, Scrooge has a restless night. A mesmerising performance by Dan Gordon gives the central character a biting force of nature when grumpy (equally so when he turns generous) yet leaves him fearful and totally out of his controlling comfort zone when confronted by the three spirits. Marty Maguire is on top form playing Marley and numerous other roles, standing up to Scrooge and bringing a lot of mirth and physical humour to the production.

The plot of A Christmas Carol is  familiar to most people. Realistically, there can be very few surprises in the direction of travel the story will take with any new production. (Though heading to Rathlin and the appearance of Mummers was nearly a ‘trip’ too far for the lighthouse scene.)

Jones and director Matthew McElhinney manage to construct particularly moving moments each time the Cratchit parents consider whether their Tim will be alive to enjoy many more Christmas seasons. Tim’s pram-wheeled guider was a quare yoke. Jones’ script is helped along by the nearly instantaneous scene changes, removing the pauses that tend to niggle and slow down shows. The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is silent and faceless. By this point, Scrooge is in a position to lead himself through the lessons that need to be learnt.

Parents should note the Lyric’s 8+ age advisory for this production. It’s not aimed at young toddlers, and they’ll understandably soon be bored and distracted. For the older children and adults, there’s always something going on.

McElhinney uses the cast of ten to fill the stage with action. There are some great physical effects. Watch out for faces appearing at (or through) doors, and the neatly constructed sleight of hand near the end when Scrooge is almost in two places at once. Yet there are no deliberate pauses to encourage audience adulation: these are just part of the magical world that has been created for our pleasure.

(The repeated references to Willie Drennan hark back to the son of the First Presbyterian Church (Rosemary Street) manse, a short-lived physician, writer and political activist from the early 1800s, rather than the modern-day musician who is very much alive!)

By the end, Scrooge is bringing joy to the entry in which the action is set. A Christmas Carol is one of Marie Jones’ best scripts. It’s warm, well-paced, pleasingly architected with callbacks to earlier phrases tying the story up into a neat package. The humour is infectious. The cast inhabit the characters with confidence. And the musical elements bolster the playful atmosphere. The Lyric Theatre’s A Christmas Carol is a great festive treat, not to be missed, and continues its run until Saturday 11 January.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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