A Christmas Carol, in the Tradition
VICTORIA KINGHAM watched A Christmas Carol at Rye Creative Centre
Rye is a bit far afield for our very local newspaper. However Duke’s Theatre Company are always an exception and this production was well up to their usual high standard. Five actors and a ventriloquist’s dummy played a multitude of characters, entirely in the spirit of the original, if that isn’t too much of a play on words.
Duke’s is a completely professional outfit, and what they present is decidedly not just shouty local theatre. They offer songs, dance, tableaux, high drama, and scene changes impeccably interwoven into the whole, all carried out by the actors themselves, usually in the open air. In this one-and-a-half-hour indoor show, surprisingly faithful to the original story, they presented a mobile cast of about a dozen, and several ghosts. They even succeeded in eliciting sympathy for Tiny Tim, despite the fact that dummies are always a bit creepy. Mercifully he didn’t ask God to bless us, every one. There was also a gloriously anachronistic snow globe which became a symbol of Ebenezer Scrooge’s moral recovery and hope, presented as it was, scene by scene, from sister to lover to nephew to Ebenezer and back to Tiny Tim.
Make em laugh, make em cry, make em wait, recommended Dickens’ mate Wilkie Collins, advising aspiring writers on marketing their work to Victorian audiences. A Christmas Carol in its own time did all these things and gave Dickens an everlasting place in British literary history. And while Duke’s is a contemporary company with modern dramatic ideas, it has absorbed and used the best traditions of English travelling theatre companies from the 13th century onwards.
A Christmas Carol is currently sold out touring the North of England, but if you can get as far as Crowborough you can see it on 27 or 28 December hedukestheatrecompany.co.uk/briar-house-barns
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