A Christmas Carol

There is something faintly miraculous in watching the Old Vic turn itself into a Dickensian funfair. You step in expecting theatre, and you get mince pies, hand-bells clinking like cheap jewellery in a street market, and a zip-wire turkey flying over the audience like the diving eagle it may once have dreamed of being. The trick is so obvious, alluring and dramatically foolproof that it should be investigated by Trading Standards.

Or maybe the Monopolies Commission should be called in. It sometimes feels that Matthew Warchus’ perennial hit has been around almost as long as the book it draws from. Its popularity can be seen in how — even with little in the way of pre-marketing beyond announcing this year’s debt-collecting miser — it effortlessly fills its pews.

Paul Hilton’s Scrooge is a wiry, haunted creature, like a man who has spent too many hours waiting for Evri to turn up and has finally snapped. He’s not the traditional portly curmudgeon overheating in a dressing gown. No, Hilton gives us a Scrooge who looks and acts like he’s one missed meal away from starting a revolution. It gives his transformation a sharpness you don’t expect. When he softens, you don’t think “Christmas magic”; you wonder if he smelled something delicious from another room.

The production design remains a masterclass in theatrical excess. Lighting up this absurdly effective gothic pantomime, lanterns descend with the earnestness of an entire John Lewis advert. Snow falls in quantities that would impress an Alpine village. Potatoes and carrots hurtle down over the audience while sprouts are parachuted in over the stalls. Every ghost arrives with the air of a disgruntled teacher nearing retirement, dragging chains, childhood trauma, and a strong sense of narrative purpose.

And beneath the spectacle, Dickens’s old-school moral sermon still lands — mostly because it never stopped being depressingly relevant. The play reminds us that poverty is bad, greed is worse, and that no matter how many Christmas jumpers you buy, someone somewhere is still working a zero-hours contract and not having a very jolly time. The difference here is that the Old Vic packages this truth in enough well-crafted charm, bells, and warm lighting to make you forget the harshness of the reality outside.

By the final tableau, audiences are weeping, cheering, and possibly drunk (Dickens would approve of at least two of those states). The production insists, with almost aggressive warmth, that human beings are capable of kindness. In London, that’s a harder sell than most West End tickets.

With Warchus departing after 11 years at the venue's helm, this production will be his crowning glory (closely followed by the sublime musical Groundhog Day) and there are inevitably questions over whether, like Tiny Tim, this Dickens adaptation will ever see another Christmas.

If you can stomach a bit of kitsch, a bit of Dickensian melodrama, and the faint dread that what’s being sold to you as redemption might just be a vehicle for guilt then take a night off, get yourself to the Old Vic, and watch it. Just don’t be surprised if you leave with a mince pie in one hand and a lump in your throat.

A Christmas Carol starring Paul Hilton continues at the Old Vic until 10 January 2026.


Photo credit: Manuel Harlan