GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
New Scrooge, same old cause
PAUL DONOVAN applauds the dogged determination of the Old Vic to stage Dickens’s classic Christmas moral tale in support of Waterloo food bank
NOTHING TO LOSE BUT CHAINS: Scrooge (John Simm) confronts his erstwhile worker Marley (Mark Goldthorp)
[Manuel Harlan]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
A Christmas Carol
Old Vic, London
THE annual celebration of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic did not disappoint: it is an explosion of energy from an excellent cast, anchored by the outstanding John Simm playing Scrooge.
This is the eighth year that the Old Vic has performed A Christmas Carol, making it a real festive curtain raiser for the many who attend. The play represents Christmas writ big, celebration and joy, yet also a very moral story of one man’s redemption.
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