THE Flanagan Collective's boisterous, interactive A Christmas Carol keeps setting up new homes, like a forgetful squirrel gathering the nut harvest.

After fitting snugly into the Lamb & Lion Inn and The Gillygate in past years, Coxwold playwright Alexander Wright's "lovingly bastardised" account of the old Charles Dickens chestnut has moved equally snugly into Meeting Room 2 at the York Guildhall for this winter's version.

Already, director Tom Bellerby's latest revival for the York Theatre Royal associate company has popped up at Manchester's new pop-up theatre, The Great Northern Playhouse, where the 19-day run gave returnee John Holt Roberts and company newcomer Al Barclay the chance not only to bed in their new partnership but to let it blossom too.

Everything else was already in place in Wright's party piece: the two-hander with the two-course meal of meats, quiche, chips, cheese and mince pies; the warming mulled wine; the sing-along Christmas pop songs and carols; and parlour games to imbue Scrooge with the spirit of Christmas. Brian Furey, from The Gillygate, still serves the festive fodder and libation, and the actors still provide bags of energy while feeding off the audience's readiness to participate.

That audience, around 20 in number, is met by the host of Christmas past, John Holt-Roberts, who revives his jocund, cajoling role of ringmaster of ceremonies Jacob Marley, with an agent provocateur's sense of purpose and gravity but with a relaxed warmth that has everyone in his hands immediately.

His guitar-slinger Marley is not burdened with chains or the mien of death; instead he is the liveliest of revellers, although he skilfully drives the plot forward at all times too, balancing the need to encourage participation with having a much better sense of time's passage than CS Lewis's Mad March Hare.

Holt Roberts's Marley had warned of a selfish, morbid Scrooge with "a bad case of the humbug", and Barclay's darkly bearded, tall Scrooge is the curt curmudgeon to the manner born from the moment he grumpily and reluctantly agrees to let the audience join him in his parlour: a stone-walled room with sackcloth for curtains, a couple of doors for spooky entrances, and the lowest candlelight known to man.

Wright's script eschews the conventional physical representation of Dickensian ghosts of past, present and future; instead the spectres are conveyed by Scrooge's actions and reactions each time sudden darkness descends as Marley pulls the strings. Such is the skill of Wright's writing and Bellerby's direction that the show can change mood from party pieces and Christmas cracker jokes to the dark depths of Scrooge's vexed mind at the flick of a switch.

On the one hand, quick-witted, quick-footed Wright is delightfully irreverent; on the other, his love of Dickens' storytelling powers and of Christmas games, shared meals and exuberant gatherings is always present too.

Come dine with Scrooge, a dinner date full of surprises yet familiarity in a show that will have you leaping with joy like Barclay's Ebenezer as he rushes into St Helen's Square.

A Christmas Carol, The Flanagan Collective, Meeting Room 2, York Guildhall, until January 4 2015. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk