A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic: Twee as can be and a triumph nonetheless
A Christmas Carol | Old Vic | ★★★★★
The Old Vic’s annual production of A Christmas Carol has almost every sickly sweet ingredient to make it utterly detestable for any self-respecting Londoner: audience participation, children on stage, pleas for the poor. And yet! Every year, this Victorian sopfest has me weeping in my chair.
The merriment kicks off before Act 1 has even begun, with audience members welcomed into the theatre by bonneted ushers passing out warm minced pies, in a foolproof way to get the crowd onside. From there, the audience, this year positioned in the round, is enfolded in the warm embrace of the golden glow created by a near 100 lanterns swinging from the skies, as a top-hatted band play some sort of convivial tune in the centre. Yes it’s twee, but it’s Christmas, and we’re allowed something nice.
Not that it’s all merriness and cheer. Death and coffins are poverty play a large part in the mood, while Marley’s ghost lugging onto the stage with his reams of brass chains before being dragged back off brings Gothic shade. Last year, unforgivably late to the start of the show, I was particularly impressed by the extent of this chain, which I found piled up in the foyer as stagehands deftly yanked Marley back to the bar at the front for his stage exit.
Now in its ninth year, pretty much the only variability comes from the casting of Scrooge, usually a starry pick. This year, picking up a heavy baton from a two-year run of Doctor Who stars (Christopher Eccleston and John Simm) is Paul Hilton of Slow Horses fame, who more than rises to the challenge. A more shouty, spindly Scrooge than previous slyer iterations, Hilton’s journey from grumpy to giddy is a complete joy to watch, while his closing tremors of the first half – “Guilt – I will not feel it,” he shouts as the lights go down – is genuinely spine-tingling.
The staging has also been moved around this year, with the usual raised cruciform that cuts through the stalls replaced by a sunken stage in the middle. The result is more intimate though I did miss the playfulness allowed by the raised staging, from which Scrooges have previously been able to leap up and down from and that made the audience participation that comes at the end more unexpected.
Speaking of. Adapted by Jack Thorne, known for his mega success with Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, this year’s show keeps all the crowd-pleasing elements from previous years. When it’s time to assemble the Christmas feast for the Cratchits at the end, it’s a whole theatre effort, as sheets are hung from the upper circle to throw potatoes down and strings of sausages are weaved through the stalls. Meanwhile one little boy, plucked from the audience to carry the jelly, nearly stole the show when immediately toppling over beneath it – before, I must add, a masterful recovery aided by Hilton himself. This is part of what makes the show so joyful: there’s a lot of bells and whistles, but they’re homemade, not glossy: bedsheets and winches and soap-bubble snow. Not to mention a lot of actual bells themselves, with which the cast chime out carols throughout the show.
The surest signal of the show’s success may, unconventionally, be just be after curtain call, with the charity bucket collections on the door filled liberally – a sure sign of Dickens’ message delivered.
For the naysayers, there’s two words only; may I direct you to Ebeneezer Scrooge, scene one, to deliver them.
A Christmas Carol plays at The Old Vic until 10 January 2026