THE CHIMES. To 1 January.

London

THE CHIMES
by Charles Dickens dramatised by Les Smith

Southwark Playhouse 62 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 0AT To 1 January 2005
3pm 23-24,28 Dec-1 Jan 7pm 23,27-30 Dec 24-26 Dec
Runs 1hr 55min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7620 3494
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 December

A cold shower beside the warm bath of A Christmas Carol but Southwark makes it worthwhile. Southwark Playhouse's choice from Dickens' Christmas Books shows why A Christmas Carol remains the popular one. The Chimes (actually a New Year story) has as its central sinner old Toby Veck. Not only is his name less characterful than Ebenezer Scrooge, but his fault is more oblique. A poor messenger, he falls for the Malthusian political economy of the rich (attacked by Dickens in Carol with Scrooge's references to the surplus population), believing poverty is the fault of the poor.

His conversion is both less concrete and more trite. Scrooge reformed can do something because he's rich. Old Toby can only smile benignly. Hunger and poverty remain. It's kindly shopkeeper Mrs Chickenstalker (Alison Garland, a picture of Dickensian good-heartedness) whose provisions prevent most of these characters expiring before the interval.

Nor is there a clear line of conversion to match the biographical visions the Christmas Ghosts take Scrooge through. Before the interval in Les Smith's adaptation there's a straightforward account of honest poverty contrasted by wealth that's equally callous whether it thinks itself sympathetic to the poor or not.

Afterwards comes a nightmare phantasmagoria, of destitution, prostitution, radical violence and death. And the resolution, if it worked in Dickens day, has by now been done to death.

Still, Gareth Machin's fast-paced production plays it with conviction on a stage often lit with brooding intensity by Fiona Simpson. Three large bells loom overhead, their sound made by tubular bells in John O' Hara's resonant score. And John Kane gives a confident, lived-in performance as old Toby, cheerily accommodating in manner if misled in opinions.

There's some vocal stiffness among other male performances, but a strong sense of a sharply divided society. T J Holmes creates a cameo lickspittle clerk and a sense of idealism warped as a worker turning to sabotage (anathema to Dickens despite the violence in his writing). Katherine Heath shows resilient fortitude as the heroine, neatly contrasting Susy Kane as the grown Lillian, who knows she cannot maintain her self-respect. Her fading from innocent child to painted lady makes Dickens' point as forcefully as any single thing.

Alderman Cute/Tugby/Shadow: Toby Aspin
Mrs Chickenstalker/Mrs Filer: Alison Garland
Meg: Katherine Heath
Will Fern/Young England/Mr Fish: T J Holmes
Toby Veck: John Kane
Lillian/Mrs Bowley: Susy Kane
Richard/Sir Joseph: Mark Springer
Young Lillian/Child: Charli Harris/Jessica Harris/Eleanor Mitchell

Director: Gareth Machin
Designer: Tom Rogers
Lighting: Fiona Simpson
Composer: John O' Hara
Movement: Alan Caig Wilson
Assistant director: Jason Lawson

2004-12-23 11:02:39