A Christmas Carol – Review – Crucible Theatre, Sheffield

By Clare Jenkins, December 2025

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without mince pies, mulled wine, lighted-up windows, hangovers, It’s a Wonderful Life on TV, and A Christmas Carol on stage.

As the festive season creeps towards us as inexorably as spectral fingers crawling up the counterpane, Dickens’ classic ghost story-cum-redemptive tale about the perils of meanness is popping up all over the place. And God bless ‘em, every one.

Aisha Khan’s adaptation firmly roots itself in Sheffield’s fine carol-singing tradition. The cast – in plaid Quality Street costumes and with South Yorkshire accents – stride around the stage singing such village favourites as ‘Six Jolly Miners’, ‘Sweet Chiming Christmas Bells’ and ‘Hail Smiling Morn’ so boldly, it’s as if they’re daring us not to have a good time.

The songs, arranged by Matthew Malone and sung a capella, are supplemented with hummed choruses of ‘doooeee-doooeee-doooeee’ or ‘bada-bada-bada’. The purpose seems both to cover scene shifts and to exhort us all to eat, drink and be merry. Or else.

Every Christmas Carol needs a narrator, and here it’s Jack (Mel Lowe), a lively lad, skilled in shoplifting, who tells his little gang of young chums (from assorted Sheffield drama groups) the story of misanthropic miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Strangely, though, instead of Dickens’ ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner… hard and sharp as flint’, we get Ian Midlane, who’s more Pickwick than pennypincher.

“Wrapped in chains”

Generous of girth and bumbling in manner, he shows little of the ‘pointed nose’ or ‘shrivelled cheek’ of a man who eats ‘melancholy’ dinners and the odd bowl of gruel. Whether berating his lowly clerk Bob Cratchit (a not-overly-‘umble Ryan O’Donnell, who also plays the young Ebenezer), refusing money to charity collectors or rejecting his nephew Fred (Aaron Anthony)’s invitation to dinner, his low-level amiability threatens to undermine the story’s whole point.

In addition, like Scrooge’s generous-hearted first employer Mr Fezziwig, he seems to believe ‘If in doubt, shout’. Both as Fezziwig and as The Ghost of Christmas Present, Adam Price’s opening speeches seem to be addressed more to a packed Sheffield United stadium than to a theatre audience. Other cast members, too, shout their lines as they dash on and off the stage like greyhounds out of the slips (often playing different parts, in different costumes) and roam restlessly about. They also leap up and down Rose Revitt and Kevin Jenkins’ three-tier set, which bears more than a little resemblance to the set of Steven Daldry’s An Inspector Calls, with its first-floor counting-house, grimy windows, precipitous stairs and ground-floor, holly-bedecked hearth.

Scrooge’s long-dead business partner Jacob Marley (Anthony Ofoegbu) is first seen in a seaside prom magic trick, face and hands poking through Scrooge’s front door. His second appearance, walking through the audience wrapped in chains wrapped round decaying grey rags, yet with scrupulously polished shoes, would probably make more impact if the chains actually clanked.

“Flashes of sentimentality”

Elin Schofield’s production, while full of forced jollity, is disappointingly low on stardust, soul – and music. The unaccompanied singing might be true to the Sheffield tradition, but a touch of fiddle here or of piano there might add charm. Atmosphere comes largely from Richard Howell’s effective lighting, as in the Debtors’ Prison scene (an add-on to the actual story, presumably to make a relevant point about ongoing debates around poverty).

Elsewhere, Nitai Levi’s Ghost of Christmas Past offers a rare dose of charisma while having more than a touch of Brassed Off about him in his braces and miner’s lamp. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, meanwhile, looks like Elphaba in Wicked, though without the green face.

There are moments of humour, odd flashes of sentimentality and deeper poignancy, yet also questions. Why isn’t Tiny Tim (Leonard Bailey, looking pale rather than poorly) given more to say, to endear him to us? Why doesn’t Martha leap out from a cupboard to surprise her father? Where are the children Ignorance and Want – and the various phantoms? Other important moments are too swiftly dispatched: the three men in the city discussing Scrooge’s death, for instance, and the dividing of the spoils after the miser’s death.

Overall, and to quote Dickens again, there’s more of gravy than of grave about this production.

Christmas Carol is at Sheffield Crucible until 10th January: sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/events/a-christmas-carol-2025
images: Johan Persson

Clare Jenkins( Writer )

Clare’s dream is to live in a hotel suite, safe from the bother of boiler breakdowns and crashing computers. Thanks to her husband Stephen McClarence’s work as a national newspaper travel writer, she’s been lucky enough to stay at hotels across the UK, India and many other countries – and has loved (nearly) every minute. As a journalist herself, she was a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for over 20 years and has made features and documentaries for Radios 3 and 4. She’s also a former theatre reviewer for The Stage magazine and, with her husband, co-author of Teatime at Peggy’s: A Glimpse of Anglo-India.

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