As fine a festive treat as Charles Dickens’s story of Christian charity may be, do we need quite so many Christmas Carols every year? Joyously, this musical reworking is different. Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s adaptation still features Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and co, but Scrooge is a woman (Penny Layden, appropriately dour) and her backstory has been subtly yet movingly revised.
So has the framing: Scrooge’s story is spun on stage with Dickens (Elexi Walker) present alongside a “Ragged School” of children. He is a Pied Piper-like figure in chequered trousers who encourages them to make “magic” through storytelling after they are left in penury by their rich, hard-hearted benefactor, Scrooge. Dickens’s meta-interruptions grate at first but we are soon swept into the story-making.
