Although it’s the second most influential Christmas story of all time, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a tale that’s disseminated by adaptations rather than because everyone still religiously reads the 1843 novella.
And for eight Christmases in a row – including 2020! – the main form of dissemination for Londoners has been the Old Vic’s stage version, which packs ‘em into the huge theatre for two months every year.
I haven’t been since it debuted in 2017, when Rhys Ifans played supernaturally reformed miser Ebeneezer Scrooge. Back then, Matthew Warchus’s production of Jack Thorne’s adaptation was simply a stage version, of a story endlessly retold each year. Now it is essentially the version, not because nobody else does it (in 2022 I counted 11 adaptations), but because of the unparalleled scale of its success: it’s certainly the most successful stage adaptation of this century, and quite possibly ever.
Eight Christmases on and it’s charming, but groans under the weight of its own success. What really struck me on second viewing was the conflict between Thorne’s smartly empathetic text and Warchus’s ecstatically OTT Christmasgasm of a production.
Making a few judicious departures from Dickens, Thorne seeks to humanise Scrooge, get to the heart of his wasted life, make his second chance at being a decent man count for something. His relationships with women are smartly scrutinised – the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future are all pointedly female.
But it can be hard to focus on that stuff in a show so full of jolly carols, priapic stovepipe hats and exquisite bellringing. The second half is a virtual orgy of redemption, in which the extreme levels of good cheer blow the fourth wall to smithereens. Brussel sprouts descend on parachutes! A steaming turkey the size of a fridge arrives by zipwire! Mulled wine-scented fake snow carpets us! It’s enormously fun, and so dementedly OTT it almost feels like ironic meta commentary on our love of the story’s determinedly happy ending. But it’s a cartoonish place for Thorne’s thoughtful text to wind up.
Since Ifans made his debut, a different star has taken on the role of Scrooge every year. For 2024 it’s the redoubtable John Simm, a performer of depth and menace who is merely okay here – he has a bit of a coldly booming Christopher Lee thing going on during the pre-redemption present day scenes, but it feels like there’s only so much he can do to impose himself on Warchus’s tinselly joy machine of a production. It would be fascinating to see what a totally outlandish lead performance might do to this well-drilled spectacle, but I’m not sure we’ll get the chance now.
That’s because with Warchus due to leave the Old Vic in autumn 2026, it seems highly unlikely that this production has many years left in it – probably just next Christmas; at a pinch a 2026 edition might be his swansong. I would say that sounds about right – this maximalist take on Dickens isn’t so much dated as overexposed – it’s fun, but it’s not so perfect that it deserves to run indefinitely. Still, if you want raw Christmas injected directly into your veins, there’s truly nothing quite like this.