The Scouse Christmas Carol review – A knockout comedy with a potty mouth | stage

WWhether it’s Paul Hilton at London’s Old Vic this winter or Marty Bellew in Glasgow next year, you’re never far from a curmudgeon this holiday season. However, only one of them will strip down to their tights singing “I’m So Sexy” by Right Said Fred.

At the Royal Court in Liverpool they do things differently. With his silver hair slicked back, Paul Duckworth’s Scrooge is not only miserly, he’s also lustful and foul-mouthed, not to mention a hot shot on the harmonica.

On top of that, he is actively corrupt. His colleague Jacob Marley has mysteriously disappeared, and after Scrooge tampers with the will, he will inherit his biscuit factory. The joke about Jacob’s cream biscuits is the first of many biscuit jokes.

Marley’s widow, Barbara (Lindsay German), believes something is afoot, which means, in this novel by Kevin Fearon, that the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future are not so much supernatural visitations imagined by Dickens as a ruse to evict Scrooge. His drunken sleep is disturbed by Garston’s ghost busters, who playfully spray water at the audience from their proton rifles and scare him clean.

Surprisingly, the more the show moves in its rebellious direction, the more the original asserts itself. Take away the antics and romantic subplots (it turns out that Scrooge and Barbara have a history) and you’re back with a wholesome message about generosity and community spirit. There’s no harm in that, but focusing on getting the story across reduces the number of jokes, especially since we often get an expletive where we expect it to be a gag.

The exuberance of Mark Chatterton’s team covers the cracks. If they deserved better material than this, they wouldn’t let it show. Whether it’s doe-eyed Lenny Wood as Bob Scratchet or multi-tasking Kiddy Sutton as everything from housekeeper to mayor, they all fuel a high-energy ensemble. The show is glued together with song and dance numbers backed by Ben Gladwin’s live band and choreography by Beverly Norris Edmonds, not forgetting Germain’s phenomenal vocals on the big ballads.