15 and 19 December
As Guy Masterson took his bow last night I was reminded of the book by Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451, set in a dystopian world of extreme cancel culture, in which all books are illegal and a group of brave people have taken on the task of memorising whole texts in order that they might be passed on down the generations. Notwithstanding the fact that the A Christmas Carol we had just been entertained by was an adaption by Nick Hennegan (who also directs), this slightly odd reflection was a nod to the widely held view that our present day idea of the spirit and meaning of Christmas owes as much to Dickens and this story in particular, as to the events around the arrival of The Baby Jesus. In short, it is a seminal cultural text worth the memorising. But here was no mere recital of the text, this was a full-blooded performance of the type Dickens, himself a fan of theatre and something of a performer, was famous for. Mr Masterson gives us no less than an object lesson in detail, economy and concentration. The simple striking out of the name of Marley by the charity collector was economical, humorous and telling. And then the little thumbnail sketches of the guests at Fezziwig’s party are clever and delightful as he skips effortlessly from Fezziwig, to his wife, his daughters and their bashful followers.
Masterson gives us a Scrooge transformation to melt the hardest of hearts. He reveals the heart of Scrooge that had been atrophied by false gods and wrong choices, a man whose humanity had been lost and locked away and thus could be any one of us, or as Dickens puts it, ‘Our fellow passengers to the grave’. With a voice like loose gravel he berates anything that looks like Christmas spirit including from his relentlessly cheerful nephew who has the very thing that he has lost, but is about to rediscover. Masterson nips nimbly from character to character, a change of voice a slight adjustment of posture, a telling detail and the bare stage is full of life and variety. We are taken on a journey that moves without being sentimental until his agonised realization in the future graveyard strikes with plangent desperation.
The stage is bare save a chair and black drapes. Dress is modern, but purely incidental. The tenebrous atmosphere is wrung out of the text with the help of simple lighting changes and a sensitive score by Robb Williams.
This version is a brilliant bringing to life of a seminal text done in a way of which Dickens himself would have undoubtedly approved.
★★★★★ Graham Wyles, 16 December 2025
Photography credit: Brigitta Scholz-Mastroianni (Nux)
