Review: A Christmas Carol

Having Scotland’s cherished Community Theatre specialists Wonder Fools take on The Brunton’s 2024 panto was a fabulous idea. Robbie Gordon & Jack Nurse, Wonder Fools’ driving forces take a community-first approach to everything they do, using their experience and connections to produce work of highly professional but strongly local quality. That’s precisely the case with A Christmas Carol which marries an impressive professional cast with a sensational Chorus full of talented local, young performers.

The story, adapted and scripted by Robbie and Jack, is a clever riff on Dickens’ original tale. Scrooge (Graham Crammond) is still a money-making miser in need of a good haunting, but the year is 2024, and Scrooge’s business is payday loans. Cratchit (Rebekah Lumsden) is still a put-upon minion but the ‘sickly’ Tiny Tim (Robbie Gordon) is built like a tank, and dying of a Vitamin D deficiency. One thing A Christmas Carol at the Brunton will do is make you laugh – a lot.

Lumsden is tremendous from the get-go, a comedic live wire and a musical threat who captures the audience’s full attention with a thrilling performance of ‘Winter Dreams’ a sparkling and thoughtful original from the panto’s musical chiefs Stuart Ramage and Roan Ballantine, better known as multi-instrumental duo VanIves.

The panto also affords plenty of opportunities for its other professional stars to shine. To say that the ghosts of past, present, and future, Michael Dylan, Laura Lovemore, and Michael Dylan (again, not another Michael Dylan), are unique takes on the instructional spectres, is an understatement. However, spoiling the particular pop culture and visual jokes each draws upon would be a sin. I will say that both Dylan and Lovemore have excellent comic timing and a delicious sense of the absurd.

“…a seriously impressive professional cast with a sensational Chorus packed with talented local, young performers.”

Crammond, Bruton’s prized dame for several years now, is superb at the centre of it all. Yes, Scrooge is a vision in lurid outfits and clownish makeup, but she’s also a sympathetic hero who undergoes a sweet and salty transformation from Grinch to philanthropist. He underscores Scrooge’s damaged vulnerability with a particularly potent rendition of ‘The Spark’, another VanIves special.

About this central tale, Wonder Fools pepper a bunch of wonderful minor characters from a moustachio’d munchkin worrying about providing for their wife and kids, to Scrooge’s long-lost love plucked from the audience and given a surprisingly recurring part in proceedings! When choreographer Amy Robinson gets hold of them for the big song and dance numbers, the full ensemble ‘sleigh’ every time. (No apologies asked for, or made.)

**Click to enlarge and for image details – photo by Mihaela Bodlovic**

However, no panto is complete without a villain, and in casting the superb Chloe-Ann Tylor as the odious MacGuffin (film fans will be sharing a knowing smile), the panto does itself a huge favour. If there’s an award to be given out for outstanding speak-singing this season, she deserves it for a deliciously noir take on ‘MacGuffin’s Muffin’. It’s another excellent VanIves original, marking them as music makers worth hitting up for further theatrical escapades.

Giving Scrooge a life-long enemy such as MacGuffin works well, not only in respecting panto-tradition, but also providing a rich source of OTT comedy, and a fresh stimulus for Scroogie’s descent into mammon. On the other hand, the action is pitched deeply into the comedic throughout, leaving Scrooge’s redemption story charming, but a little lacking in pathos.

However, it’s possible that only theatre critics hit up a pantomime and start complaining about a lack of tear-jerking goodness. Overall, Jack Nurse directs an excellent, free-flowing, and laugh-out-loud adventure.

“Crammond, Bruton’s prized dame for several years now, is superb at the centre of it all.”

Set and Costume Designer Jenny Booth also deserves praise for creating a portable set which still provides a strong sense of space, and opportunities for characters to make impressive entrances and exits. With a little help from lighting designer Benny Goodman, the results are sometimes spooky, but mostly celebratory.

Staging such a high-quality, good-looking, and incredibly fun show is no small achievement given the current and foreseeable absence of the Brunton panto’s usual, stable home. As a statement of intent by the currently homeless theatre, A Christmas Carol is a blinder. The performing arts are alive and well in East Lothian, and a new theatre truly must rise from the ashes of the condemned Brunton Hall.

In the meantime, this fine panto is sure to make the audiences of Haddington and Musselburgh laugh, sing and bark (you’ll find out if you go) throughout December and into January.

Featured Image: Michael Dylan and Graham Crammond – photo by Mihaela Bodlovic