A Christmas Carol reviews at The Old Vic – starring Christopher Eccleston

"Christopher Eccleston rendition is the best yet"

"Here’s an early Christmas present for theatre lovers. Jack Thorne’s version of the indestructible Dickens story is now in its seventh annual iteration at the Old Vic and, with Christopher Eccleston in harness as the fearsome old miser Scrooge, it is by far the strongest outing of the show yet."

"Warchus’s production, which unfolds overhung by lanterns on an attractive cruciform stage that reaches invitingly into the stalls, has settled gloriously into itself. It is playful but powerful, with a stripped-back aesthetic that declutters the classic text of layers of excess Victoriana but retains a sure sense of time and place."

"This is a package that contains the very best of Christmas."

"Tidings of comfort and joy"

"Properly playful, nightmarish and gripping with lashings of melodrama, this show combines riotous Christmas jollity with mighty moral lessons about redemption: it’s never too late to change for the better."

"The production is in its sixth glorious revival — but a first for me — and I cannot imagine a more threatening presence than Christopher Eccleston’s burly, glowering, granite-carved, mean-spirited Scrooge who stuffs his fortune into coffin-like boxes and hides them under the floor."

"... what resounds are Christopher Nightingale’s marvellous re-arrangements of Christmas carols and songs, sometimes played by the orchestra, sometimes by the outstanding ensemble company ringing hand bells"

"I’ve fallen for Scrooge — God bless Christopher Eccleston"

"A Christmas Carol has become the default Christmas show, and this is the market leader."

"I knew why it should resonate, but still I hadn’t responded emotionally to this frangipane-rich retelling."

"Dancing, larking, beaming, Eccleston sells us wholeheartedly and touchingly on this (yes, I’ll say it) regeneration. So consider me de-Scrooged by this Scrooge. The production is still the star. But it shares top billing with an actor at the top of his game. Oh, and ten-year-old Casey-Indigo Blackwood-Lashley is a treat as one of four Tiny Tims rotating the role."

"Christopher Eccleston’s Scrooge delights"

"Eccleston inhabited the role of Scrooge with febrile brilliance"

"For the first ten minutes he seemed a little frostbitten — though maybe we were all in shock that the first Doctor Who to have a northern accent was here speaking with a southern accent. Then suddenly he got his first big laugh and visibly relaxed. From that moment on Eccleston inhabited the role with full febrile brilliance, shifting between sarcasm and terror, elegiac wistfulness and manic joy as the ghosts took apart the rusty cogs of Scrooge’s life as a moneylender."

"Matthew Warchus’s production transforms the Old Vic into a theatrical magic box, reconfiguring it so that a catwalk-like stage runs right through the audience. This heightens the impact of the vivid hauntings, not least the moment when Andrew Langtree’s Marley enters with a chain like a behemoth’s tail. Simon Baker’s sound design plays wonderful sinister games with heavy slamming doors and clanking locks. Hugh Vanstone’s lighting bewitches too, a galaxy of suspended Victorian lanterns that can flare like synaptic connections in the brain or shooting stars."

"Christopher Eccleston’s snarling Scrooge lights up this dependable show"

"Jack Thorne’s annual feast of mince pies and Christmas cheer is starting to creak – but it’s redeemed by the Doctor Who star’s ferocity"

" Christopher Eccleston who, with perhaps the exception of Rhys Ifans in 2017, is easily the best Scrooge yet. Like a snarling underfed dog, the former Doctor Who brings an animating furious savagery to Scrooge"

"A Christmas Carol is a story of personal transformation and rebirth. Eccleston’s Scrooge resists this possibility almost until it’s too late. Yet when it comes, it’s all the sweeter for the joyful surprise Ecclestone finds in it. The falling away of his disillusionment, like peel from an onion, is pure joy to behold."

"if Warchus unapologetically smothers us in nostalgia – all those Dickensian frock coats, cascading fake snow and apple cheeked carol singers – then it’s because this show understands Christmas lives most comfortingly in our imaginations. You can resist, of course. But really, why would you want to?"

"Christopher Eccleston is brilliant in this festive treat"

"When it comes to glowering at the poor, it’s hard to beat Christopher Eccleston’s eloquently furious eyebrows."

"At this point, six years after its premiere, director Matthew Warchus’ production is a fast-paced, slick and moving festive treat. Rob Howell’s design – a starry sky of swinging, candlelit lanterns above a gangway dividing the audience down the middle – conjures the chill of a Victorian Christmas Eve and leaves the rest to our imagination."

"Eccleston is well suited to this. His Scrooge bristles with frustration; he’s an imposing presence, stomping across the stage as he resists the call of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. He confronts us with a version of the world’s most famous fictional miser that is like a wall to be dismantled brick by brick. As that edifice starts to crumble, Eccleston emanates the same giddy energy he brought to a previous time-travelling character. He can, of course, pull off Ebenezer’s dourness, but as in Doctor Who, he’s brilliant at exuding an unguarded, childlike joy, as Scrooge realises it’s not too late to change his ways."