The Charles Dickens story about greed and the destructive power of money is as appropriate now as it was in the author’s own time. This present day adaptation by Piers Beckley is directed by Ray Shell and between them they have produced something quite astounding. Setting it in Jerusalem gives it even more resonance, delivering a strong message of peace and love that transcends all religious and racial boundaries.

We are in a poor British School in old Jerusalem, and the children, together with members of the multinational community, are performing a production of the play. The back wall of the stage is covered in huge graffiti-style symbols indicating the mixed nature of the population (a Cross, a Swastika, a Jewish star and a crescent moon, a dollar sign, a euro sign etc.) and the acting area is surrounded on three sides by chairs which are moved about throughout to denote scene changes.

The cast rush on noisily, fighting and teasing like school children. They seem like an undisciplined lot, but when occasion demands they are drilled with precision. There are twenty of them, a mixture of seasoned actors and new drama school graduates, and they play some fifty named roles between them. They also punctuate the action with songs and instrumental music and vocally produce all the sound effects. For instance, the door opens with a “swish” and closes with a “slam” and at times they also play furniture helped only by a couple of drapes and the ever present chairs. It is amazing what a little ingenuity and a tiny budget can achieve. Ray Shell and his choreographer Donna King have performed a miracle and their actors do them full justice, giving stunning and honest performances.

There is one actor who stands out from the rest, who carries the play, and this, of course, is Ebenezer Scrooge himself, played by the wonderful Edward Kingham, who took over the role at a week’s notice when the original Scrooge fell ill. He is a consummate actor who can make you laugh and cry in equal measure with just a glance or a tilt of the eyebrow.

The Giant Olive production team have produced something that is riveting. It is moving, harrowing and yet very funny and gives the Christmas message in a clearer fashion than anything else around.

-Aline Waites

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Lion and Unicorn

HEADSCARFS, scullcaps and a ghost strapped with explosives feature in this daring production of a festive favourite.

With a nod to Christmas’s roots, Tiny Tim et al have been transplanted into modern Jerusalem. Prayer in many languages fills the air and references to war and financial crisis underline the enduring relevance of Dickens’s tale of redemption.

This could have been another strained attempt to make a point about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or turn Christmas into a politically correct multifaith love-in. Mercifully, it is far too clever, dark and subtle to allow for such simplistic descriptions.

The cast is huge for such a small venue. The actors, most of whom play multiple characters, sing, dance and strum their way through the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. The nightmare scenes are haunting and come complete with smoke and hallucinatory lighting.

Though the acting is splendid across the board, Edward Kingham in particular must be applauded for his energetic playing of Scrooge, coming as this does straight off the back of his performance in The Hostess of the Inn, the previous production at The Lion and Unicorn.

Giant Olive, the company responsible, have shown with this production that they can be as ambitious as the best of them. May their audacity long continue.

What could be more appropriate for the "less is more" treatment than the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge? When it's Christmas, there's a show to be done, money's short and the space is bare, the only stretchable resources left are human. So, here's A Christmas Carol that exploits - exuberantly - the only things available in abundance: talented people … and chairs.

Oh, and a Scrooge, of course. We were, alas, deprived of the performance of Aaron Barschak, conceiver of this piece, for health reasons, but were rewarded with another tour de force from Edward Kingham, who recently delighted us with his work in The Hostess of the Inn. What a small, dark space provides so well is claustrophobia. The proximity of the audience to the heaving humanity on stage (more in a moment) brings the walls right in, and Kingham's performance taps into this. From his fingertip-counting tic to the horrors of reading his own headstone, he plays this like some driven creature in a German expressionist movie. He has the eyes for it (please let all of us see them, though, all of the time). It works a treat. Things seldom seen : Scrooge helpless, kissing-close to the lost love of his life ; Scrooge no onlooker, but right in amongst the suffering Cratchits ; Scrooge reeling from his own rat-gnawed corpse, always trapped inside his visions, and us with him. This is not to be had on a screen, however compelling the image, or even on a big stage.

With just a shift of chairs, a spin of bodies, a lighting change and noises on, we follow Scrooge around his counting house, up and down the shadowy alleys of London, weaving through the crowds, avoiding human warmth. And when the supernatural takes over, we get to share in Scrooge's experience, not of a bad dream or two, merely, but of sensory overload. The spirits of Christmas past, present and yet to come we expect, but not the overwhelming forces they summon up to melt, soften, shake and terrify Scrooge into his redemption.

This is the work of the youthful ensemble, deploying all manner of skills to achieve its purpose. Its play is full of invention, humour and surprise. It is company work, but I have to mention Barbara Link for her sheer versatility (from Tiny Tim to Christmas Future on points), Mark Gillham for Young Scrooge and Jade-Elize Lorentz, his Belle ; also John Hellman for his truly engaging Fred and above all Joe Shefer for his heartbreaking Bob Cratchit, and his Headmaster…which brings us to the School.

Now, to get all this humanity on stage you have to start somewhere : here, the framing device is the school play in "a small, poor British school in the north-western corner of The Old City in Jerusalem", with "members of the Jerusalem community" invited to perform. Too many layers? I fear so. You have to start with "doing kids". This was done well, but then you're stuck with it. And on top of that you've been set up to watch for the shades and resonances of this new context. Inventive but really distracting. It wasn't remotely enough to put me off the show, which was a joy, but the physical theatre, the lighting (when it has learned to stop playing catch-up) and Scrooge's story stand on their own. Humbug-free.

Published Tuesday 30 December 2008 at 13:10 by Catherine Usher

With a much bigger cast than the traditional fringe theatre production, Ray Shell’s innovative version of A Christmas Carol immediately sets itself apart from the rest.

Its setting is explained only in the programme - a British school in Jerusalem decides to bring the Dickens classic to the stage and members of the community also join the cast.

Edward Kingham’s Scrooge is at his best when he’s being scathing and sarcastic. Frequently an observer of the proceedings, he plays the role with humour and frequent reserve, continually allowing the other players to take centre stage.

Mark Gillham as the young Scrooge is particularly impressive, commanding the audience’s attention and equally convincing as the youthful romantic, slowly morphing into the selfish, miserly cynic.

With a sizeable cast of schoolchildren who continually take part, then withdraw from the story, the Lion and Unicorn’s limited space is full to compacity and the reshuffling of chairs as props won’t be to everyone’s tastes.

Yet strong characters shine through the occasionally overwhelming action, with Amy Puglia as the Ghost of Christmas Present filling the room with warmth and joviality.

Barbara Lanik’s decidedly female Tiny Tim is a bold move that pays off and her wonderfully silent yet expressive Ghost of Christmas Future demonstrates her versatile talents.

Essentially, an ensemble piece full of admirable multi-taskers, as long as you can handle Scrooge in an unexpected setting, this is a festive favourite worth rediscovering.

Now here’s a neat idea for injecting a little fraîcheur into a stale seasonal staple. In Ray Shell’s impressive cast-of-thousands (well, 20) production, Dickens’s classic tale of Christmas humbuggery overcome is performed as a play-within-a-play, the performers (explains the programme) being drawn from the students of a British school in Jerusalem and members of their neighbouring community. The multicultural actors thus perform amid school chairs and against a backdrop decorated with a range of religious symbols (including, ho-hum, the ancient Indian symbol of the swastika – an unfortunate piece of provocation).

The play-within-a-play device is a neat idea, although the containing drama – concerning the multi-faith Jerusalem actors – is never satisfactorily elaborated: Piers Beckley’s script is a few scenes short in that respect. Other non-traditional elements include the fact that Edward Kingham’s intense, psychologically dense Scrooge (principal prop: a toothpick) is given to headbutting beggars.

As Scrooge is led in time-honoured fashion through past, present and future by a trio of spirits, a large chorus of bystanders provide sound effects as doors are opened and closed (‘Lockity-lockity-lock! Irrrrrrgh! Slam!’), and sway and writhe menacingly as they chant something about hanging and killing (I don’t remember that bit in Dickens). At one point, the phrase ‘Father, forgive me for I have sinned’, repeated as a mantra, threatens to develop into a big song-and-dance number. What a shame it doesn’t – the choreography, by Donna King, is a delight.

By Charles Dickens, adapted by Piers Beckley
Giant Olive Productions
Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Review by Howard Loxton (2008)

Ever since George Sallis and his Giant Olive company took over at this Kentish Town pub theatre they have been nothing if not ambitious and among the several Christmas Carols to choose from this Christmas this must be the most adventurous and surprising. Director Ray Shell has taken on the challenge of telling Dickens's story in its entirely with its many settings all in this small room above a pub with almost no budget and using a cast of 22, which almost outnumbers the audience for there are only a few rows left after most of the venue's stock of chairs has been appropriated to form the set.

At first, with chairs lined against the walls it seems this is going to be an in-the-round production - but those seats aren't for you! When a man who is obviously in charge of them brings on a host of giggling girls who fill the chairs, then on instruction begin to set them into a complex pattern you realise that it has been conceived as a school production, with a couple of boys and probably some teachers to take on major roles.

There is a chain-rattling Marley from Ross Michell, a glittery Christmas Past from Funmi Pearce in black covered in silver platelets and a more traditional holly and bauble well-fed Christmas Present from Amy Puglia who are followed by an extraordinarily en pointe medieval-jester-looking Christmas Future from Barbara Lanik, all pirouettes - a dance of death indeed.

The large cast is used to good effect to back up the ghosts in haunting Scrooge (choreographed by Donna King) and providing sound effects from church bells and chiming clocks to the squeaking of mimed doors and turning locks as well as carols and other musical support. They move the chairs to change location much more in fact than is really needed, though it gives the production a very definite style. All this physical work is disciplined and dramatic but when most of this largely young cast, many making their professional debuts, are called upon to assume an individual character they play it as a giggly schoolgirl would. Is this a directorial decision to make it more like a school production? It makes it difficult to take the characters seriously or care what happens to them. This extends even to the family of Tiny Tim for, though Joe Shefer and Denys Gaskill's Bob and Mrs Cratchit have warmth and gentleness, they are surprisingly one dimensional. However John Hellman as Scrooge's nephew begins to suggest something deeper and making the business men discussing Scrooge's demise into dealers on the floor of the Stock Exchange rooted these one-liners in reality

Edward Kingham, bravely taking over the role of Scrooge less than ten days before they opened due to the illness of Aaron Barshak, pitches in with a full-blooded performance. Much of the time he has little to do other than stand around and watch. Perhaps he pulls out the stops too early but there is a particularly fine moment, when he thinks he may be choking and coughs out a toothpick, when you see his vulnerability. Bafflingly this Scrooge is something of a cross between Fagin and Steptoe.

A Jewish Scrooge? The last thing Christmas is is kosher! There is something going on here for the walls are painted with Jewish and Christian texts, there is a Star of David, an Islamic Crescent, a Cross, and a Hindu Swastika. There are also stencilled lines of numerals - now what are they? Concentration camp reminders or mobile numbers? At one point there is a ritual verse sung in Hebrew? Is this a synagogue funeral? A few moments later a woman prostrates herself. What is going on?

Dickens's Christmas is about eating and drinking and happy fun, rather than about religion, but to use it for some sort of ecumenical statement seems perverse. This is certainly a production that keeps you interested by its directorial ideas, but what exactly are they? To find out you have to have recourse to the programme, not the performance. Apparently the idea is that this all happens in a British school in Jerusalem where other members of the community have been invited to take part in a spirit of friendship. I am all for goodwill, not just at Christmas and especially in the Middle East and of course, goodwill is at the heart of Dickens's message but I still don't quite get it - especially when this Scrooge, rapidly reforming, enunciates Christ-mas as twice syllables as though never before has he realised what the word means.

However, this is a production that is trying to do something different. If it doesn't entirely succeed that clearly did not stop the audience I saw it with enjoying it. Go in the spirit of the season and give it a chance - if you can get a seat. The night I saw it, a few days into the run, it was already packed out.