GREEN Hammerton company Badapple Theatre have gone to the country with Kate Bramley and Richard Kay's revival of Farmer Scrooge's Christmas Carol.
The setting is Scrooge's Yorkshire farm in the bitter chill of Christmas Eve 1959, during a cold winter as long as Scrooge's face. Robert Angell's Farmer Scrooge is even tighter fisted than the mythical average Yorkshireman, such a contrast to the defiant good spirits of Rachael Henley's Mrs Cratchitt.
This is the re-mixed version of Badapple's Christmas show, now with a male-female cast, which brings a better balance straightaway. Not least because Henley has an engaging exuberance that first caught the eye in Mikron Theatre's One Of Each fish-and-chips play this summer, when she revealed a prowess for multi-role playing and diverse accents.
Farmer Scrooge is ostensibly a two-hander, but writer Kate Bramley has given her cast a bundle of puppets too. If it worked so well for The Muppet Christmas Carol, then it can work again for Badapple.
The Ghost of Christmas Past is a shaggy dog; the Ghost of Yet To Come, a skull-faced dark figure, and for the Ghost Of Christmas Present, Angell transforms himself into Las Vegas Elvis Presley, with Scrooge now a puppet in pyjamas on his arm.
Henley's puppet version of Mr Fezziwig becomes an Italian master chef, but the essence of Charles Dickens's ghostly cautionary tale remains intact throughout, aided by Jez Lowe's music, while John Bramley and Catherine Dawn's compact set is as full of surprises as an experienced traveller's rucksack.
Farmer Scrooge's Christmas Carol, Badapple Theatre, on tour in Yorkshire on various dates until December 30; booking and venues, badappletheatre.com
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