This year’s festive offering at The Rep is A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story - a recent version of Charles Dickens’ famous tale, adapted by Mark Gatiss, and directed by Adam Penford. The ghosts definitely take pride of place at the heart of the story, but the play is also as warm, wholesome and Christmassy as the flame on a brandy-soaked pudding - with plenty of ghoulish moments along the way. 

Matthew Cottle takes the lead as that old miser, Scrooge. He may be following in the footsteps of the many iconic stage and screen Scrooges who have gone before, but he carries the role perfectly - and importantly, knows how to get a laugh out of the audience at the right moment. This is not a grim, dark retelling; Gatiss is a master at dancing the line between the sublime and the ridiculous. 

Geoffrey Beevers takes the role of narrator, allowing more of Dickens’ story through, and the whole play is bolstered by unobtrusive captioning at the side of the stage. Lines from the original text have been cherry-picked to reveal the witty and relatable side of the book - alongside the grim and grotesque.

Opposite Cottle’s Scrooge is Rufus Hound, playing the tormented spirit of his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Hound plays Marley as a larger-than-life (or should that be ‘death’) character, and is sinister and intimidating in his ghostly form. Doomed to walk the earth bound in heavy chains, he warns Scrooge against a similar fate, with the help of three more ghosts, representing Christmases past, present and future. 

So far, so Sit-Com Christmas Special - but this version offers something quite different in the way it looks and sounds. The set, designed by Paul Wills, consists of huge stacks of filing cabinets, which are moved around the stage seamlessly by the (excellent) company. By a trick of the light they can transform from Scrooge and Marley’s offices to a Dickensian cityscape, or a cold, misty graveyard. 

One of the challenges in a play that boasts a host of ghosts is how to make them suitably supernatural. In this version, a mixture of visual and practical effects combine with unshowy attention to detail. A sign that reads ‘Scrooge & Marley’ becomes faded and decrepit in seconds - blink and you’ll miss it - and when Scrooge is travelling spirit-like into his own past, a snowball gets thrown right through him. 

It’s not easy to repackage a story that is so widely beloved, and so often re-told - nor to make ghosts appear credibly on stage. A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story does both, and while it might send shivers down the spine or have the audience jumping in their seats occasionally, it doesn’t neglect the other essential ingredients for a festive production - fun, silliness, and a large helping of Christmas Cheer. 

Five Stars

A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story was reviewed on Thursday 21 November by Jessica Clixby at The Rep, Birmingham, where it plays until Sunday 5 January

Images © Ellie Kurttz