A Christmas Carol (Parent And Baby Screening) (PG)

A Victorian family settles down in front of a cardboard stage for a paper theatre performance of A Christmas Carol. Through the eyes of one of the children, the homemade production magically comes to life as a visually arresting dance drama featuring the voices of Simon Russell Beale, Martin Freeman, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya, Andy Serkis, Sian Phillips and Leslie Caron.

LondonNet Film Review
A Christmas Carol (PG)

Expressive movement and spoken narration are exceedingly happy bedfellows in Jacqui Morris and David Morris’ dance drama adaptation of Charles Dickens’ seasonal fable. Imagined as a paper theatre production which magically comes to life, A Christmas Carol swoons to the fluid choreography of Olivier Award winner Russell Maliphant, who thaws out characters from frozen poses on snow-laden streets and visualises the ghost of Jacob Marley as a whirling dervish weighed down by his cloak of chains. A tender duet between young Scrooge and his sweetheart artfully pirouettes around the money lender’s office to a piano solo of the traditional Christmas carol God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen, which plucks our heartstrings with the introduction of a violin’s tremulous lament…

David Morris’ screenplay retains Dickens’ poetic prose almost word for word – “There’s more of gravy than of grave in you” – but there are some neat flourishes like a grey clockwork mouse, which skitters about the floor of Scrooge’s home, and a brutal assault that trades effectively in the athleticism of four dancers.

A young girl called Emily (Thea Achillea) nestles in the arms of her parents (Richard Cotton, Georgina Sutcliffe) to watch her older siblings, Alice (Ruby McMillan-Wilson) and Peter (Oliver John Lock), perform Dickens’ seasonal fable on a paper theatre stage with melodic narration from their grandmother (Sian Phillips). Money lender Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Nunn, voiced by Simon Russell Beale) rejects an invitation to Christmas dinner from his kind-hearted nephew Fred (Simone Donalti, voiced by Tom Stourton) and returns home where the ghost of his late partner, Marley (Russell Maliphant, voiced by Andy Serkis), heralds the arrival of three spectres.

The Ghost Of Christmas Past (Dana Maliphant, voiced by Leslie Caron) reminds Scrooge of happier times as an apprentice to businessman Mr Fezziwig (Andrey Kaminsky, voiced by Colin Mace). The Ghost Of Christmas Present (Mikey Boateng, voiced by Daniel Kaluuya) and the Spirit Of Yet To Come reveal the sobering fortunes of Scrooge’s underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit (Karl Fagerlund Brekke, voiced by Martin Freeman), his wife (Hannah Kidd, voiced by Lorraine Ashbourne) and their desperately ill youngest child, Tiny Tim (Danil Golovam, voiced by Archie Durrant). Scrooge resolves to learn the “latent moral for his own improvement”.

A Christmas Carol employs simple but effective visual effects to meld real and phantasmagorical elements without losing sight of the evergreen moral lesson that facilitates Scrooge’s rebirth. Sonorous vocal performances complement the dancers’ actions as cameras waltz around sets torn from the pages of The Illustrated London News. The generosity and enduring power of the human spirit thrums in every frame. God bless us everyone.

– Jo Planter