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The Review - THEATRE by ANGELA COBBINAH
Published: 27 December 2007

Scrooge – revisited and revitalised

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Young Vic

IS it possible to relocate A Christmas Carol from its cosy setting of Victorian London, given that it so dominates our imagery of the festive season?
Mark Dornford-May’s adaptation at the Young Vic shows that you can, in exciting and unexpected ways.
Dickens’s fable of human redemption is transported to post-apartheid South Africa, where Scrooge has swapped gender and runs a gold mining company.
The product perhaps of the government’s black economic empowerment programme, which has created a small but controversially wealthy black elite, Scrooge has forgotten her township roots and has no time for those less fortunate than herself.
Haughty and flint-hearted, she refuses to help sponsor the education of a miner’s handicapped daughter, Tiny Thembisa, and talks blithely of “death decreasing the surplus population”.
This is South Africa, so music – a mixture of opera and communal singing from the 30-strong cast – reinvigorates a familiar story, while the extensive use of film cleverly gets round the business of filling in the details of Scrooge’s township childhood and youth. Key episodes are dealt with similar inventiveness – the arrival of Marley’s ghost manages to be as chilling as any I’ve seen on stage or film, despite the complete lack of special effects and stage props.
Opera star Pauline Malefane plays the lead, movingly depicting Scrooge’s gradual shift from imperiousness to desolation but able to inject humour into the role at the same time.
The only pity is that we don’t get to hear much of her wonderful singing voice.
Until January 19
020 7922 2922

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