Anger and immense tenderness in superb one-man Christmas Carol – Brighton

In his one-man Christmas Carol, John O’Connor delivers the most remarkable, the most mesmerising demonstration of the seemingly limitless power of the spoken word. Had the stage been full of actors on the most detailed and sophisticated of sets, I doubt it could have conveyed the glory, the anger, the compassion and the sheer delight of Charles Dickens’ great classic more vividly than O’Connor did with voice, with gesture and with movement alone.

O’Connor’s belief is that if he can “see” the tale, then we can “see” it too – and he brought it all alive quite magnificently with a tour de force performance, one very much, it seems, in keeping with the performances Dickens himself so loved to give.

Indeed, O’Connor starts as Dickens reading from a script before, within moments, the characters take over and so too do our imaginations, expertly prodded and prompted by O’Connor through this most glorious of stories. There is immense skill as he takes us single-handedly through the tale, through all its characters, all its complexities, all its nuances and through the astonishing beauty of Dickens’ language. You find yourself wanting to cling on to every gorgeous turn of phrase. Christmas lunch with the Cratchits is astonishingly done, all the flurry of a struggling, contented household. It really is as if we are there. Equally so with dear old Fezziwig’s Christmas party of days of old and nephew Fred’s Christmas celebration in the present. But goodness, the tone changes as we move towards a Christmas which might yet be averted. There is infinite compassion in O’Connor’s recreation of the grieving, dignified Cratchits post Tiny Tim’s death which might yet be avoided. O’Connor delivers it with heart-breaking tenderness.

Dickens wrote the piece out of rage, but never has anger been so eloquently expressed than it is here through the hope of this tale of redemption made possible and then bountifully realised. As O’Connor himself has said in interview (READ IT HERE), we live in an age where food banks have never been more frequented. And in that sense, never has A Christmas Carol been needed more. Tonight in Havant – and then in Brighton from December 21-23 – O’Connor shows himself Dickens’ most supremely gifted servant. One of the most beautiful pieces of theatre I have ever seen.

The show is a fitting tribute to its director Peter Craze who sadly passed away in December 2020.