A Christmas Carol

The Ark, Dublin

It’s easy to recognise Ebenezer Scrooge, even from an early age, without ever having met him in the pages of his original tale. He has always been (in the words of Dickens’s surprisingly chatty narrator), “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner”, but he has also been an animated duck with a Scottish accent, a grouchy 1980s television executive, or a man up to his waist in singing muppets.

This amiable piece for young audiences may add to the world’s population of Scrooges, casting the physically versatile Aaron Monaghan and Bryan Burroughs as the miserly humbugger, his four ghostly visitors, and a cheery gallery of paupers. But its most dearly held desire seems to be to send them first back to the book – faithfully presented in a whittled-down version here, and also placed on the stage – and then, through its modestly homespun means, back to their own imaginations.

There’s a teasing irony in Monaghan and Burroughs’s warm-hearted agenda. They recognise a cold-hearted cynic who must learn the value of goodwill rather than the price of everything – “Darkness is cheap,” points out a wry Monaghan, “and Scrooge liked it” – but they are just as reticent to cast Christmas as a time of overheated consumption.

Scrooge decries people spending money they don’t have, which these days seems like sound advice, but some of the show’s embellishments chime with contemporary worries. In the original, for instance, an ebullient Scrooge promises to raise Bob Cratchit’s salary; here, he offers to pay his mortgage, too.

Intended for children aged eight and older, that subtle note will intentionally fly over the heads of much of the audience, but a reluctance to alter the voice of Dickens’s original text may also cause them some difficulty. Beaming with smiles and dressed in smart suits, both performers make for inviting presences whose engaging physical slapstick better helps to animate the tale. As traditionalists, though, they’re hesitant to involve their audience directly in the piece, asking them finally to use simple things from home to construct their own tellings, if they’re not doing so already.

Such sentiment may be slightly contradicted by the sight of a puppet Tiny Tim in a bespoke Louis Copeland suit, but, as this bright show well knows, what is Christmas without some well-earned indulgence?

Runs Dec 8th, 15th and 22nd

Peter Crawley ***