A Christmas Carol review: a festive treat that combines ‘childish pleasures and grown-up ideas’

RSC revival of David Edgar’s 2017 adaptation stars an excellent Adrian Edmondson

The cast of A Christmas Carol
The cast of A Christmas Carol
(Image credit: Manuel Harlan/RSC)

Theatregoers will have no trouble getting their festive fix of A Christmas Carol this year, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. By some counts there’ll be nine stagings in London alone. The perennial popularity of Dickens’s 1843 story obviously “reassures playhouse accountants jittery about blows to the box office from Covid and the cost-of-living crisis”, while writers and directors are drawn to the contemporary resonance of Dickens’s attack on wealth inequality.

This year the RSC has got in early with a revival of David Edgar’s adaptation, first seen in 2017 – and set the bar “very high” with a version that combines “childish pleasures and grown-up ideas”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up