It is an indication of how far musicals have come in the 30 years since Alan Menken’s adaptation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol debuted in Madison Square Gardens that Hope Mill’s revival of it for the Lowry feels so dated. For the cast did little wrong and the creative team have made smart use of projection within the Quays Theatre’s limited space to create a pacy, energetic production that deserved to be more engaging than it was.
The challenge was the raw material. Not Dickens’ 1843 tale of greed, repentance and redemption, but the recounting of the miserly Scrooge’s Christmas Eve encounter with his past, present and future through 90 minutes of showtunes that had plenty of Broadway razzmatazz – but little by way of memorable melody. Most were performed with verve, particularly the big ensemble numbers such as “Fezziwig’s Annual Christmas Ball”, the joy of which was intended to remind Scrooge of happier times gone by.
Yet as someone who is blessed and cursed with the ability to remember a song for 20 years after one listen, I was struck by the fact that I could barely recall a chorus by the time I’d left the Lowry’s car park.
In the age where audiences have been spoiled by the wit of Hamilton, Six and Matilda, lyrics such as “All the joy of Christmas bundled up with string/ But you mean more to me than anything”, sung as part of a schmaltzy love-in between Bob Cratchit (Matthew Jeans) and his son Tiny Tim (Nicholas Teixeira), felt paint-by-numbers. All of which meant that despite the casting of Scrooge as a woman, Evelina (Claire Moore, who played Mrs Fezziwig in the 2004 TV version of this show), Christmas Carol: The Musical felt old fashioned in a not-good way. Bah, Humbug!
Fans of Menken’s back catalogue of Disney classics might lap this production up, and Merry Christmas to them. And there were elements of this version that felt like they’d had more of a refresh. Mari McGinlay’s Ghost of Christmas Past, who seemed at times to be channelling a spectral Kate Bush and brought an edgier, spikier air to proceedings, was the standout of these. Marley (Barry Keenan), meanwhile, seemed to have borrowed his look from Back to the Future’s Doc Brown, which was entertaining but perhaps not in the way it was intended.
Otherwise, this was a faithful retelling of a much-loved story, told in song while channelling Dickens’ prose and the ghosts of musicals bygone. Plenty want exactly that at Christmas, just not me.
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