Traditional festive treat

A Christmas Carol, Library Theatre Company, Lowry

IF you like your Christmas to be more traditional than tinselled and more feelgood than an “X-factor” sob story, then “A Christmas Carol” at the Lowry Theatre is right up your Victorian cobbled street.

The festive favourite has been adapted by Manchester’s Library Theatre Company for its annual Yuletide production.

The company is set to move out of Manchester’s iconic Central Library and into its purpose-built home in the centre of Manchester in 2014. In the meantime, it will perform three times a year at the Lowry in Salford, with “A Christmas Carol” staged in the venue’s smaller Quays Theatre.

Written in 1843, “A Christmas Carol” is one of Charles Dickens’s best-loved tales about miserable miser Ebeneezer Scrooge who changes his mean-spirited ways following a visit by his dead business partner Jacob Marley and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

Adapted for the stage by David Holman and directed by Rachel O’Riordan, this production is an imaginative mix of music, theatre and visual effects.

On-stage acting successfully combines with video screen images, and the use of a double staircase surrounding the open stage gives a multi-level platform for the characters to move around.

Despite its Christmas theme, the play has a strong supernatural quality to it and that is brought to the fore through excellent sound and lighting direction, and an impressive 10ft tall Ghost of Christmas Future.

In terms of cast, the 10 actors perform well, many in multiple roles, managing to jump around the stage, fly through the air and still sing classical music at the same time.

Scrooge is played by David Beames, who has a good stage presence.

Lisa Kerr and Abigail McGibbon play their multiple characters with real feeling and Claude Close is the perfect embodiment as the jolly and generous Mr Fezziwig.

And even the hardest hearts were warmed by the adorable Oliver Hughes as Tiny Tim, whose classic line, “God Bless us, everyone”, managed to thaw the ice forming on the Manchester Ship Canal.