A Christmas Carol December 2022
The Lympstone Players’ beautifully-staged production of Dickens’ still-loved story, A Christmas Carol, was a well-chosen play for our time. The Director, Sharon Wayland, used the thrust stage format to good effect, creating thoughtful groupings when the scene was full of actors, whose sense of ensemble carried the action to the audience around them.
Heather Redding gave us a subtle interpretation of Scrooge as a capitalist business man rather than just a heartless skinflint. He could have walked straight into a Tory cabinet. This was no caricature, but a fine piece of acting, with the eyes and the body as well as the voice, effortlessly commanding the stage. It also proved the case for gender-blind casting – there was never any doubt that we were watching Scrooge.
Grace Packman as Marley’s Ghost was just as convincing, clanking around in chains and boots and a wild wig, acting as a morbid master of ceremonies, dispensing advice to his former partner in doom-laden tones.
If the script sacrificed Dickens’ own language for everyday modern English, the actors did much to restore the spirit of the original with characterful performances. Andrew Minter as both the Ghost of Christmas Present and as Mr Fezziwig brought a Pickwickian ebullience to the proceedings, much needed in a story that doesn’t shrink from the darker side of human nature, as well as the poverty and hunger that haunted Victorian times, and haunt us again.
Thomasin Manley Frost, the Ghost of Christmas Past, delivered her homilies with the confident authority of a child prodigy, wraith-like but upright., a strict guide to Scrooge’s memories. Tim Askew brought the smack of dominant male to his typically Dickensian headmaster, and to his foreboding Ghost of Christmas Future.
It is this Ghost who introduces two characters borrowed by the adapter, not from Dickens but from mediaeval Morality Plays. The production bursts into dramatic life, as Ignorance and Want (Hannah Billington and Katherine Manley Frost) torment Scrooge with all his deadly sins, in rapid-fire dialogue of short monosyllabic lines. This was ferocious and agile physical theatre by all three actors, as the two vices viciously darted and thrust to threaten the hapless miser, who twisted and turned in agonies of remorse and shame. The audience froze at the sight, and children hid their eyes.
Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s ill-paid clerk, cheerily played by Bruce Ellis, has his family Christmas enriched by his master’s change of heart. A large white goose is delivered, and the scene-stealing children, Hetty and Huey Robarts-Arnold and Andrew Wadhams, show us how appealing and convincing natural young actors can be. Our Christmas has been saved.
The production was all of a piece, with atmospheric lighting (by Mai Welton and Hester Walshaw), some good sound effects (by L Campbell), and a trio of musicians – Graham Banks, John Welton and Sue Harmes. The large impressionistic backcloth (inspired by Wordsworth’s ‘On Westminster Bridge’?) was designed and painted by Judy Stutchbury, who was also responsible for props. Jenny Moxom worked her usual magic with make up, and Judy Eaton assembled the splendid costumes.
After a decade in which Lympstone was known for its Pantomimes (most notably those directed by Shirley Wilkes), it was nostalgic to see a straight Christmas play once more, taking us back to the period when Clive Wilson directed several. Sharon’s splendid production has shown us again how potent such dramas can be.
Harland Walshaw
Oh! What a Lovely War! November 2018
Joyce Pomeroy - Local Representative - NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic Association)