A Christmas Carol
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff

HATS off to the Sherman Theatre for a hilarious and scary production of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.

This was not your usual dramatic take on the ghostly seasonal favourite, but an imaginative and musical version of the classic by writer Gary Owen and director Joe Murphy.

The well-trodden tale of the redemption of a penny-pinching money-lender has been given a seasonal boost by setting it in Cardiff and including comedy, puppets, singing and dancing as well as casting Scrooge as a woman. But the core of the story about Victorian attitudes towards the poor and the state’s violence to those falling on hard times remains. As Skylar noted: “People were cruel to poor people because they had no money.”

This can be a disturbing tale for children to watch, but the production puts it firmly into a more family-friendly seasonal outing, including that Christmas essential of audience participation.

Hannah McPake was impressive as Ebbie Scrooge and had seriously scary eyes which Skylar said “were really creepy.”

The tone of the evening was set as the house band, called the Humbugs, started playing as Scrooge walked out of the dark and onto the front of the stage. The miser told the drummer: “Stop that, give me the sticks and don’t do that again.” The audience roared as it was clear this was going to be an evening of jollity as well as that all-important dose of social commentary.

One of the many liberties taken with the well-known story was the ghost of Christmas past showing Scrooge as a little girl being separated from her mother as they both entered the workhouse. The policeman ensuring parents did not complain about the enforced separation also used violence to encourage inmates to work harder and that did not escape Behati.

“I saw the policeman, he was really mean and was whacking all the children,” she said.

But upstaging all the other spectres was Owen Alun as the sequinned ghost of Christmas present — Alun also played Scrooge’s nephew Fred and the child that Dickens named Ignorance.

Alun’s stage presence as the spectre was hilarious as he continually got Scrooge’s name wrong and was accompanied onstage by his two singing Christmas baubles played by Emily Ivana Hawkins and Keiron Self.

A Christmas Carol is a seasonal classic but the Sherman Theatre makeover is a joyous romp while still managing to ensure the still relevant social messages remain at its core.

Runs until January 4 2025. Box office: 029 2064-6900, shermantheatre.co.uk.