Music by Alan Menkin Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens
Book by Mike Oekrent & Lynn Ahrens
Based on the Novel by Charles Dickens
It is that time of year folks. Everyone doing their version of A Christmas Carol; this being my second as an audience member already!
Well – let’s start by saying - if you only see one version this year, see this scrumptious merry-full festive feast at the Tabard Theatre. Outstanding staging on a postage stamp stage. Director and chorographer Lee Greenaway marshals the twelve-strong cast with pictorial eloquence and innovation.
Andrew MacBean leads the otherwise very youthful cast as the bleak, grumpy, tight-fisted and down-right belligerent Scrooge through Past, Present and Future, to be reborn on Christmas Day as the kind-hearted, giving and remorseful Mr Scrooge. A beautifully projected performance, showing the deep pain experienced in order to inhabit his rebirth. I think this is the first time I have been really moved by a Scrooge on his Christmas Day. Jacob Cook as Bob Cratchett and Paul Toulson as Tiny Tim tugged at the heartstrings rendering the song You Mean More To Me with feeling rather than pastiche. Both actors, along with the ensemble, played multiple roles with studied conviction and a real communicable sense of festive cheer, which added to the dynamism and yuletide happiness of the whole evening.
In order, Christmas Past, Present and Future, played by Grace Osborn, Anthony Ilott and Elizabeth Bright, brought new dimensions to the ethereal echoes of earthly shadows, family and the rejected souls from Scrooge’s life! Bursting with life company numbers such as the glorious Mr Fezziwig’s Annual Christmas Ball counterpointed especially well with the more somber, yet compelling, Yesterday, Tomorrow and Today sung by Scrooge as the weight of the past truly and irrevocably affects him.
A musical with mirth.
A Christmas Carol anew.
A wonderful musical evening and a classic Christmas tale for the whole family.
What more can I say?
Merry Christmas and “god bless us, everyone”.
Orlando Weston
