It may only have been around since 1843, so a mere newcomer to Festive Season traditions, but “A Christmas Carol” does manage to pack in all  the things we think Christmas ought to be about, from fond memories, forgiveness and happy endings to gigantic roasting birds that can be bought without fuss on Christmas morning (and probably won’t be properly cooked until the New Year.) I don’t think Dickens mentions sprouts, but he gets in a good slab of social conscience, charitable deeds and all-purpose goodwill to men. It’s taken a while for Northern Stage to get this classic onto their idiosyncratic seasonal repertoire, but the familiar story is well suited to the theatre’s style of simple sets, fast-flowing use of the stage, music and grasp of narrative (which last puts it in a category quite unlike the glittery modern panto.) With costumes that made a nod towards the Victorian without being distractingly shiny, this production had a tendency towards the dark, which often holds children’s attention better than unsupported merriment – though there was plenty of fun too. Scrooge was played with restrained misanthropy, travelling through fear and self-awareness to a believable benevolence, by Michael Hodgson, making him less of a caricature and more of a character. Tiny Tim wasn’t the tiny, feeble elf of many interpretations, and indeed the whole Cratchit family were more jolly (and certainly musically inclined) than pitiable. The knock-out, gasp-inducing performance, however, came from German mime/physical theatre actor Malik Ibheis, who embodied rather untraditional interpretations of Marley’s ghost and the three Spirits of Christmas. While his lines were, as suits someone from a spiritual realm, curiously disembodied by being spoken by other voices ,his tall (especially when on stilts) stage presence, acrobatic skills and other-worldly modes of movement brought a compelling physicality to the show that raised it way above the one-joke-suits-all slapstick of many less creatively imagined seasonal shows.

Gail-Nina Anderson