Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
Latest editorial
Carol in tune with austerity
GORDON PARSONS recommends a production of a Dickens classic with contemporary undertones
Credible skinflint: Adan Gillet as Scrooge
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A Christmas Carol
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
SINCE last Christmas, Britain has, if anything, slipped deeper into a modern version of Victorian economic and social deprivation and that's why the RSC is spot on in reviving David Edgar’s dramatisation of Dickens’s perennial favourite.
While Rachel Kavanaugh’s production gives full weight to the tale’s mix of exuberant jollity and tear-jerking sentimentality, Edgar’s use of its author as commentator — reminding us throughout that his narrative is based on reality and his own youthful experiences — provides an edge which never allows it to slip into pantomime.
Joseph Timms captures not only Dickens as social critic but as an actor-manager who prompts characters when necessary and who even stands in as a younger version of Scrooge before the avaricious rot sets in.
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