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A Christmas Carol
Leeds Grand Theatre
ORIGINALLY staged in 1992, this revival of Northern Ballet’s A Christmas Carol has lost none of its festive magic, even if it has lost its live orchestra (replaced with a recording by the Orchestra Wellington).
Directed by Christopher Gable and choreographed by Massimo Moricone, it draws on the company’s mainstream strengths. Part ballet and part silent film, its cast sing the occasional carol and certain characters are played for laughs (Bruno Serraclara and Amber Lewis deserve special mention as the Fezziwigs).
The design, by Lez Brotherston, is also as sumptuous as expected. The stage is a riot of rich fabrics and stick-on mutton-chop whiskers, while the two-tier set efficiently transforms from street scene, to cemetery, to Scrooge’s neglected bed chamber.
These elements make it easy to overlook the production’s tendency to over-pad certain non-essential scenes. The opening, for instance, is a striking depiction of a Victorian street where children hold “feed the poor” placards and workers enjoy makeshift slides at the end of their shift. It could nonetheless be condensed to make more time for the character development of Scrooge.
Played by Jonathan Hanks, the central character’s transformation from cold-hearted miser to sprightly man of compassion is blink and you miss it. Likewise, the Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come – a skeletal figure dressed in rags and moth-eaten wings – does little more than ominously point to a future in which Scrooge has a lonely, unmourned death.
Yet even if the narrative rendering of the Charles Dickens classic is uneven, the production never loses the audience’s attention.
The ensemble scenes are a particular delight. The swarm of shrouded ghouls that appear in Scrooge’s chamber create a genuine sense of spookiness as they dance as though on broken limbs.
A crowded festive meal fades into the background as the painful separation between the young Scrooge (George Liang) and his first love Belle (Dominique Larose) is demonstrated through dissonant, slightly out of kilter movements.
These are moments that make a bah, humbuggery of the production’s weaker elements, creating a true Christmas cracker of a show.
Running until January 4 2025. Box office
