A Christmas Carol (Bridge Theatre, London)
Verdict: A delicious nut roast
The first of this year’s cornucopia of Christmas Carols opened this week with the revered Simon Russell Beale as Ebenezer Scrooge at London’s Bridge Theatre.
And, wholesome and nourishing though Sir Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation of Dickens’s festive tale is, it is, in all honesty, more nut roast than turkey with all the trimmings.
I suspect the story’s appeal is that like Scrooge, we’re all hoping to awake from the nightmares we’re enduring, feeling rejuvenated.
But SRB is not the usual lean, mean stick of a Scrooge tormented by the ghosts of his past, present and future. A naturally warm actor, he’s more melancholic miser than full-on curmudgeon. In fact, with his plump figure and beard, he looks a lot like . . . Santa.
Wry and understated, a sigh is never far from his lips, and the cuddly performer is easily converted by the nocturnal shades who come to convince him to mend his niggardly ways.
The first of this year’s cornucopia of Christmas Carols opened this week with the revered Simon Russell Beale (pictured) as Ebenezer Scrooge at London’s Bridge Theatre
He is as inclined to sing along with these well-meaning tormentors as he is to fear them, but he is also genuinely touching.
Hytner’s production is neat and tidy; generous, but never (God forbid) profligate in its theatricality.
Using just three actors (describing each other’s actions, and their own), they mix 1960s suits with 19th-century props and 21st-century accents.
And in his anachronistic finale, Hytner has them all pull on garishly tacky Christmas jumpers.
Before then, there’s oodles of atmosphere in Rose Revitt’s set, with dry ice rising from grills to summon foggy Victorian London.
A hillock of trunks double as tombs and safes; screens carry projections of alleys; and sound effects add ominous clocks, bells and the whisper of the grave.
Otherwise the colour is all in the costumes and accents, with Eben Figueiredo supplying cod Caledonian for Scrooge’s late partner Marley, dippy ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ Indian for the Ghost of Christmas Present and a Nigerian washerwoman late on — with his own aspirated London in between.
Patsy Ferran, too, is warmly earnest in her roles including Bob Cratchit, mirroring SRB’s melancholy.
It kept me and my ten-year-old rapt, all right; but producers around the UK have nothing to fear — there’s definitely room for more figgy-pudding Christmas Carols yet to come.
A Christmas Carol runs at the Bridge until January 16.
The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk (wisechildren.co.uk)
Verdict: Niche but lovely
Rating: 
The work of the Russian expressionist painter Marc Chagall was dismissed by the Soviet Press of the 1920s as a ‘multi-coloured airborne farmyard’. Ironically, that’s exactly what people love about it today.
There’s a joyous innocence about his pictures, which feature cattle kept by townsfolk in their back yards, giant Rabbis bestriding tiny buildings and dreamy images of the artist and his wife, Bella, flying over their home town of Vitebsk.
Daniel Jamieson’s play, revived by the charismatic director Emma Rice with her company Wise Children at Bristol Old Vic, tells the tale from the early days, in the Eden of Chagall’s mainly Jewish home town in Russia.
Antolin (L) and Brisson (R) as Marc and Bella The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk, a play about the work of the Russian expressionist painter Marc Chagall
Marc and Bella fall in love, marry, suffer persecution and escape to St Petersburg to avoid conscription in World War I. They are caught up in the Revolution of 1917, and Chagall finds fame when his pictures are displayed in the Winter Palace.
Jamieson’s tale is told in broad historical brushstrokes, but the real joy is in the childlike simplicity of Marc Antolin and Audrey Brisson as Marc and Bella.
Antolin is driven, but sweet and motherable; Brisson is enchanting, but demanding and passionate.
Both have painted white faces, to evoke figures from Chagall’s pictures, while coloured light is splashed on to a twisted canvas behind them.
The loveliest colours come when they duet, to Ian Ross’s mellifluous score that emulates Chagall’s, fluid, free-form paintings.
The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk is available to rent until December 18, from kneehigh. co.uk, from today.
Keep the kiddies at home – these saucy pantos are for adults only!
Cinderella: The Socially Distanced Ball (Turbine Theatre, London SW11)
Verdict: Transgressive fun
Rating: 
Pantomime is, some say, for children. But you would be unwise to bring your wee ones to see Cinderella: The Socially Distanced Ball which, set in London’s raffish Soho and filled with smutty jokes, is an affectionate ribbing of theatre folk.
Cinders (an impossibly sweet Daisy Wood-Davis) wants to go to the ball thrown by the Artist Formerly Known as Prince (Debbie Kurup) — who is trying desperately to please his parents, Elaine Paige and Cameron Mackintosh, by finding a girl to marry (that joke works on several levels).
You would be unwise to bring your wee ones to see Cinderella: The Socially Distanced Ball which, set in London’s raffish Soho and filled with smutty jokes
The Ugly Sisters, Fanny and Vajaja (yes the gags are often of that order) do their damndest to thwart her, but the Fairy Godmotherf***er (Sean Parkins) comes to the rescue.
Rufus Hound gives good value as Buttons, as do Scott Paige and Oscar Conlon-Morrey as the Ugly Sisters.
The script by Jodie Prenger and Neil Hurst sparkles with some very good rhymes (and groaning jokes), and the cast give committed performances under Lizzy Connolly’s direction.
Cinderella: The Socially Distanced Ball runs until December 23
Alice In Streamingland (Phoenix Arts Club, London WC2)
Verdict: A curiosity
Rating:
Equally grown-up (or maybe groan up) is Alice In Streamingland, which describes itself as ‘a pansexual musical’, although there’s little to frighten the horses in Colin Savage’s confusing take on Lewis Carroll’s story.
It gets curiouser and curiouser and begins to, er, droop over its 90 minutes.
In Alice In Streamingland, which describes itself as ‘a pansexual musical’, Alice (Sofie Kaern) goes down a streaming hole into Interflixland, Disney C. Minusland and iPlayerland and, on ‘TokTik’, meets all sorts — RuPaul, Joe Exotic and Dot Cotton among them
It’s a complicated 2020 fable in which Alice (Sofie Kaern) goes down a streaming hole into Interflixland, Disney C. Minusland and iPlayerland and, on ‘TokTik’, meets all sorts — RuPaul, Joe Exotic and Dot Cotton among them.
Meanwhile the evil Queen of Hearts (Mr Savage) appears to want to take over the whole shebang. Well I think she does, but to be honest, I was lost about ten minutes into the show.
It’s a mess, but entertaining enough if you don’t try to work out the narrative detail and concentrate on the five cast members’ singing instead, which is really very good.
Alice In Streamingland until January 3
VERONICA LEE