A Christmas Carol review: Camp fun with Gate's take on Dickens' seasonal classic
Wren Dennehy and Lloyd Hutchinson in A Christmas Carol at the Gate Theatre. Picture: Ros Kavanagh
★★★★☆
The last staging of at the Gate Theatre was a festive classic. It saw Owen Roe in the title role, oodles of inventive staging, and hardly a dry eye in the house by the end of it. That was in a version by Jack Thorne. Now, another arrives via the pen of a British big-hitter, this time Neil Bartlett’s one from 2002.
If the 2019 production wore its modernity as a political stance of inclusion and social justice, this one, directed by Claire O’Reilly, does so by reflecting that mix of innocence and pop-cultural literacy that defines childhood in the age of the smartphone. It’s camp, smart-allecky, self-aware, and fun.
The musical numbers, a tumble of carols in various styles, wouldn’t look out of place on Nor would the cast in Catherine Fay’s pastel-coloured get-up. There’s enough cross-dressing to fill several pantos, and the working-class Dublin accent, another panto staple, gets rolled out too. You’d nearly expect a 6/7 joke, but, thankfully, none arrives. The panto comparison ends well short of that, as O’Reilly leans into an accessible brand of theatricality.
Being faithful to Dickens’ words, Bartlett’s script provides a solid, oh-so-familiar core around which O’Reilly spins this child-friendly production. We’re very much in Victorian London, though with plenty of Irish, and Scottish, accents. The lines jump from the stage, often delivered in chant-like rhyme by the cleverly used ensemble of Fiona Bell, Wren Dennehy, Emmet Kirwan, Maeve O’Mahony, Michael Tient, Ian O’Reilly, and Siofra Ni Eili. Each of these step into other roles, with Kirwan playing a spirited Bob Cratchit, Bell a spooky Jacob Marley, Dennehy a Fairy Godmother-like Ghost of Christmas Past, and Tient a soulful Ghost of Christmas Present.
A white-bearded, top-hatted Lloyd Hutchinson plays Scrooge, and Scrooge alone. “Solitary as an oyster,” in Dickens’s memorable description. It’s used here, too, but, if anything, he seems quite harried by visitors and staff, scorning them with his “Bah, humbugs” and his libertarian social creed. There are three other scriveners to go along with Cratchit, and, in a way typical of this production, they share the scene-setting descriptions between them.
Such gestures are playful as they are inviting, making this a show that reaches out a welcome to younger viewers. If it’s a first experience of this well-worn tale, then it’s an ideal one for that, told with brightness and clarity, though with little depth, and a certain skittish efficiency.
It’s spooky too, however. Bell as a tortured Marley delivers a proper jump scare before she warns Scrooge of his phantom visitors, while the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a silent, gesturing Grim Reaper. The design, by Good Teeth, is relatively simple. Scrooge’s shop door soon becomes the one to his chamber, with a rotating bedstead as the centrepoint of the action. John Gunning’s lighting spills frequently over the audience in an agreeable embrace.
Is there something for everyone in the audience? Perhaps not quite. But it’ll be cheered to the rafters by younger patrons, especially across the festive season.
- Until January 18
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