NIGHTSHADE Productions, the touring arm of the York Terror Trail, like to find new ways to stage their festive fixture, A Christmas Carol.

Last year, they swapped a tour of York's streets, market square and snickelways for a start outside the Mansion House and a move indoors to the York Guildhall council chamber.

This winter, they have found an alternative use for a closed shop in Colliergate. After artwork on display boards and pop-up shops in York, here comes pop-up theatre in the former home of Rawcliffe, the school outfitters.

Co-director, designer, stage manager and musician James Witchwood has re-fitted the shop as Scrooge and Marley's business premises, with blacked-out walls, two desks with stage lighting cleverly place inside them, a fireplace and mobile scenery that can be pulled across a doorway.

As before, the 90-minute performance begins and ends on the streets, guided by the booming, cheery voice of Lee Gemmell's narrator, one Charles Dickens, who leads the audience behind Damian Freddi's humbugging Scrooge across cold tarmac and stone into the dimly lit shop, where Scrooge's journey of redemption and salvation begins...with a shock. The entry of Richard Bevan's Marley will have you leaping from your seat.

Freddi has assembled a cast of five Nightshade regulars and six new additions, among whom Stephanie Hill's Ghost of Christmas Past, the multi role-playing Harriet Mayne and James Wardlaw's Bob Cratchit particularly impress. So too does young Theo Steele as Tiny Tim and Scrooge as a child.

Freddi stepped into the lead role at short notice but brings all Ebeneezer's curmudgeonly ways to the brim before his gleeful transformation, and his latest Dickens revival has the terror, sadness, mystery, joy and Christmas magic you crave. The shop setting works wonderfully well, brought to new life by Witchwood in splendidly unpredictable ways.

Better still, as ever, all proceeds will go to the NSPCC.

Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Nightshade Productions, starting at The Golden Fleece, Pavement, York, tonight until Sunday, December 10 to 14 and 17 to 21, 7pm and 9pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk