Birmingham Rep Review: This Delightfully Surprising 'Christmas Carol' Has Puppets, Projections, and a Narrator

★★★★ | As the first snow of 2024 falls across the West Midlands, the perfect time has come for the opening of the Birmingham Rep’s festive production, A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story. Adapted by Mark Gatiss (returning to the Rep since The Way Old Friends Do) and directed by Adam Penford (hot off the Dear Evan Hansen UK tour), this show is the perfect addition to the ever-growing agglomeration of adaptations of this classic Charles Dickens tale.

As soon as you enter the auditorium, you are welcomed by Paul Wills’ towers of filing cabinets, suitcases, and books trailing the edge of the stage. Two big pillars of suitcases and even more cabinets appear as the office of our protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge, where the story begins and where some of the most interesting (and partly horrifying) projections and illusions take place. 

A Christmas Carol at the Birmingham Rep. Photo Credit: Ellie Kurttz

The story itself of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story hasn’t changed from the original Dickensian piece and is relatively easy to follow. It charts a journey through Scrooge’s Past, Present, and Future, embodied as three ghosts who encourage this misanthropic miser to believe that there is a chance of potential redemption for him.

Bringing 19th century London onto the modern-day Birmingham stage are video designers Nina Dunn and Hannah Schlenker’s projections; they are second to none and unlike anything I have ever seen from the Rep. The skyline just above the stage intricately details an eroding ‘Scrooge and Marley’s’ sign; the most simplistic to the most outstanding and horror-worthy illusions all elicited gasps and jumps throughout the whole audience.

Matthew Forbe’s puppetry sprinkled in throughout is spellbinding, from the dementor-esque Anxiety spiralling around the auditorium before the ghosts even appear, to the innocent Want and Ignorance children of Christmas Present – mankind’s ’gift’ to the world that follows the ghost underneath his robe. You don’t know when a puppet will show up next and that’s what makes it even better. Even adults who have seen A Christmas Carol told on stage many times and think they have “seen it all” will find themselves delightfully surprised. 

Grace Hogg-Robinson, Mark Theodore (as the Ghost of Christmas Present), and Kalifa Taylor. Photo Credit: Ellie Kurttz

A Christmas Carol is, of course, a well-worn story that we are all familiar with. On Christmas Eve, seven years ago, wealthy old Ebenezer Scrooge witnessed the sudden death of his friend and business partner Jacob Marley. Now on the seventh anniversary of that night, Scrooge has an unexpected visit from him, bound in the chains of consequences from a lifetime of greed. Warning that the same tormented fate awaits Scrooge if he doesn't change, Marley and three other ghostly encounters force Scrooge to confront more of his life than he ever thought he would.

It feels, in this version specifically, that the timelines of when the ghosts are coming and what night are we on can get confusing. At several points, the play mentions that the ghosts are coming once per night on three consecutive nights, but at other times, we get the sense that it all happens on one night (i.e. the events all start and end on Christmas Day). I caught myself spending some of the time with the Ghost of Christmas Past thinking back to what it was, momentarily pulling me out of the story.

The unique addition of a Narrator (played by Geoffrey Beevers) was well used in Act 1 but he seemingly vanished until the last scene in Act 2, when he was also joined by two children whom we hadn’t seen before. This narrative choice is certainly an intriguing one: although it paves the way for the setup of an ending reveal which I did not see coming, I still feel that it would have been worth teasing slightly throughout and the play as a whole would have been better served without losing our ‘context provider’ in times when we really needed him.

Geoffrey Beevers (right) plays the Narrator. Photo Credit: Ellie Kurttz

The show has a star-studded cast full of performing veterans both young and old, including Matthew Cottle as Ebenezer Scrooge, Rufus Hound as partner-in-crime Jacob Marley, and Oscar Batterham as Bob Cratchit. The chemistry between these three actors is amazing and had me begging for more.

The 12-strong ensemble is small but mighty, each of them playing at least two roles between them as well as their ensemble roles filling the gaps where needed. Specific mentions go to Lance West’s Young Scrooge who gels so well with Kalifa Taylor’s Belle, as well as Rebecca Trehearn’s Mrs Cratchit and Ryan Weston’s Tiny Tim. For the performance I watched, River Mahjouri and Corrina Onyiukah appeared in their child ensemble tracks. What a talented duo they are, juggling 5 separate roles across the show, bringing laughter and almost tears in some parts!

Altogether, A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story is an amazing adaptation. Whilst a few plot holes slipped through the fabric of Ebenezer's bed curtains, it is nevertheless an incredible production and really worth seeing this festive season if you prefer a more traditional play to a pantomime.

★★★★

A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story plays at the Birmingham Rep until January 5, 2025.