Published in the Guardian
Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Four stars
WHEN Charles Dickens conceived the character of Ebenezer Scrooge,
it is unlikely that he had in mind a large woman in a spangly leotard,
bejewelled shoulder pads and curly black wig. But in Johnny McKnight's
raucous revision of A Christmas Carol, the writer, director and star makes a convincing case for Scrooge as Dame.
As an avaricious money-lender and sole proprietor of Marley & Me, this Aganeza Scrooge has survived the loadsamoney era
to become the epitome of bah-humbug misanthropy. Selfish and merciless,
she spends much of the show chatting up terrified audience members.
Sharp-tongued, waspish and given to ad-libbing, she is also very funny.
This
larger-than-life creation inhabits an all-female landscape that's
a dizzy amalgam of Victorian London (all mockney accents, decaying teeth
and fatal childhood illnesses), modern-day Glasgow (the Ghost of Panto
Present is a perfectly realised Jimmy Krankie
lookalike) and Strictly-style dance routines ("Get that, Lisa Riley").
If Kenny Miller's baroque black-and-white designs weren't quite so
tasteful, you'd call it uncouth.
Where McKnight is a vision of
heightened callousness, the others revel in exaggerated pathos. Anita
Vettesse's Cratchit contemplates a Christmas dinner featuring a
sparrow-sized turkey yet refuses to hear a word against her employer,
while Sally Reid's Tiny Tim hobbles around on crutches and sees the good
in everything. That's when the two of them, along with Michele
Gallagher and Helen McAlpine, aren't doubling as 1980s throwbacks, Sally
Bowles-style cabaret singers or 1960s soul queens in their efforts to
teach Aganeza her lesson.
The tongue-twisters, corny jokes
and sweet-throwing are about as far from Dickens as you can get, yet so
brilliantly does McKnight fuse the contradictory strands – bittersweet
social commentary and pugnacious panto – that by the end, when Aganeza
finally sees the error of her ways, he strikes a chord of genuinely
warming Christmas cheer.
© Mark Fisher, 2012
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