FringeReview UK 2023
Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol
Orange Tree Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Children's Theatre, Classical and Shakespeare, Comedy, Costume, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Orange Tree Theatre Richmond
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Is this show just for children? Adaptor/Director Becca Chadder’s subtle play on parents’ experience underscores a deeper message of connection, nurture, festivity and love that crosses generations. Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol triumphs as easily the best junior take on this classic I’ve ever seen.
Additional Voices provided by the OT Community Ensemble: Simon Bartlett, Penny Duffy, Zoe Fakouri, Lucy Greenhalgh, Linzi Hardcastle-Jones, Lynne Harrison, Joyanna Lovelock, Sarah Macrae, Ellie McDonagh, Terry Oakes, James Philips, Lesley Raymond, Sophie Taylor, Emily Waddilove, Stuart Watson
Director Becca Chadder, Designer & Costume Designer Isabella van Braeckel, Lighting Designer Jonathan Chan, Sound Designer Matt Eaton, Stage Manager on Book Katy Ross
CSM Jenny Skivens, Production Technician Priya Virdee
Production Photography Steve Gregson
Till January 6th
Review
The Orange Tree’s renowned for its fresh take on Festive shows. The latest, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol adapted and directed by Becca Chadder as Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol, runs till January 6th.
It’s a neatly-framed 70-minute two-hander invoking the original but enveloped with new significance: including parents working so hard they’ve no time for the spirit of Christmas. It’s up to children to remind them. Luckily, there’s no shortage of those in this show, specifically designed for 5-10-year-olds to join in with cries of “goose goose goose” or wild applause. All will not be explained. You’ll have to be there.
So overworking Bob Cratchit and later Scrooge (Callum Broome) is chivvied by a more grown Tiny Tim (Chloë Sommer) to take a break. Bob’s inherited old Uncle Scrooge’s business and having never employed a clerk, unlike Scrooge, decides to work right through Christmas.
No four-day week for him. More like seven. Though lightly touched in, all the notes Dicken strikes about poverty and overwork 180 years ago are struck again like tiny gongs forged in the 21st century: precarity, the gig economy, population “surplus” (Dickens’ Scrooge-spin on Malthus’ mad assertions), the briefest invocation of certain politicians.
Bob Cratchit might have self-inflicted his own workload, but it’s no less painful for Tim. Who invokes our help. Sommer’s virtually never still, gyrating round the stage and taking care to engage each row.
After some resistance, Bob accedes to re-enact Scrooge’s account of his experiences in A Christmas Carol (you feel Scrooge must have related it with Dickensian verve over a crackling fire, every Christmas).
Sommer’s both a master conjurer and – like Broome – athletic, contorting in shapes to bend over with a haul of presents or confiscate boxes’ worth of finance. Isabella van Braeckel’s set is a flexible set of props cleared daily for the Goldsmith play running alongside it. Echoing that production, a simple portrait of Jacob Marley hangs balefully aloft, as holy and ivy-encrusted corners give on to a table and at one point a meagre Christmas meal (hauntingly, one of six plates is removed for a grim future).
Jonathan Chan, who lit that other production, works some magic here with spectral auroras of white and warmer shades working simultaneously: it’s strikingly atmospheric. At one point emerald and violet vie in a ghostly invocation. Matt Eaton’s sound is discreetly eerie, though the main “wooos” are audience-induced. Still I can’t evict Eaton’s inclusion of a maddening earworm! That includes an offstage (OT Community) chorus of voices, even applause.
Sommer and Broome swap roles and keep a playful fluidity, Broome as Mrs Cratchit, Sommer as Marley, and the Spirits of Christmas Past and Present – the Future is invisible. Broome being Scrooge means Sommer takes Bob Cratchit in scenes with him.
Broome scrunches to Scrooge – with all those night terrors and hauntings, unwilling flights over London and revisiting Scrooge’s past. Broome radiates emergence from an anxious Bob too. The chemistry and athleticism of these two actors are infectious and in 70 minutes – Sommer takes the lead here, engaging the audience – charm’s turned up like a halogen headlight. But it’s warm and trippy too.
Some elements are stripped out. Whilst we get Scrooge’s early life in some detail, his love interest and nephew are erased; so there’s a heart-warming Cratchit family inclusivity. It makes sense. Those watching this will find out there’s more to Scrooge one day. But so much of Dickens’ essential message is there to underscore a perennial relevance; including charity worker Mrs Lovett (Sommer again).
Is this show just for children? Chadder’s subtle play on parents’ experience underscores a deeper message of connection, nurture, festivity and love that crosses generations. Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol triumphs as easily the best junior take on this classic I’ve ever seen.
