A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Bristol Old Vic)*****

 

By Arran

Link: https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/a-christmas-carol £4.50 for A Christmas Carol or £12.99 for a season pass (5 productions)

Available until: You have 48 hours’ access to the play.

There are lots of good productions of A Christmas Carol and this one is right up there. Everything about it worked really well and it is very enjoyable even when it is your fourth Christmas Carol in a couple of weeks.

This production was adapted by Tom Morris with music by Gwyneth Herbert and they both wrote the lyrics. The adaption is really good, it covers everything but it’s not too long. The music is really good and it always suits the mood of the play at that moment. I can understand why some of the characters danced to the music because it is that sort of music.

Lee Lyford who is the director has really brought out all the different parts of the story. The ghosts are scary (I won’t say the ways the ghosts were created but they are all very clever), the sad bits in the Future really are sad but the ending is really happy. There is lots of humour and I really enjoyed it.

Tom Rogers’ set is really good and I like how Anna Watson changes the lighting for the different places Scrooge visits. It really feels like he is going to lots of different places.

John Hopkins is a brilliant Scrooge. He is good at being mean and moody but he always seems like a real person, not like a pantomime villain. There always seems to be layers in his personality. He actually doesn’t seem that horrible at all, more like someone who is trapped in his behaviour and he’s not sure how to be anyone else. He is very good at the emotions. He is also very good at the funny bits like when he talks to the audience and he can do magic tricks too.

Ewan Black is another really good performer, he plays Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s father and Mr Fezziwig, they are all big characters and he makes them seem big but he never overdoes it. Mofetoluwa Akande is a really nice person as Belle and I really liked Stephen Collins as Bob Cratchit and Shane David-Joseph as Freddie. Some of the cast play lots of different roles. It works well (and there is a joke about playing different roles which I liked) and all the actors are good so it worked really well.

If you want to see A Christmas Carol and you like musicals I think you might really like this one.