In his second round-up, EWAN CAMERON picks excellent solo shows that deal with Scottishness, Englishness and race as highlights
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Carol in tune with austerity
GORDON PARSONS recommends a production of a Dickens classic with contemporary undertones
Credible skinflint: Adan Gillet as Scrooge
[Manuel Harlan] 
Fiery words from the Bard in Blackpool and Edinburgh, and Evidence Based Punk Rock from The Protest Family
MATTHEW HAWKINS is mesmerised by a performance that dissolves the line between audience and performer
MATTHEW SHARPE recommends the essays of a Renaissance politician that instruct and unnerve after 400 years
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes the reissue of a seminal work of revolutionary theory that have genuine relevance in the current context
RON JACOBS rides shotgun with a member of Black Bloc on the wave of anti-capitalist protests of the 1990s and early 2000s
A Christmas Carol
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
SINCE last Christmas, Britain has, if anything, slipped deeper into a modern version of Victorian economic and social deprivation and that's why the RSC is spot on in reviving David Edgar’s dramatisation of Dickens’s perennial favourite.
While Rachel Kavanaugh’s production gives full weight to the tale’s mix of exuberant jollity and tear-jerking sentimentality, Edgar’s use of its author as commentator — reminding us throughout that his narrative is based on reality and his own youthful experiences — provides an edge which never allows it to slip into pantomime.
Joseph Timms captures not only Dickens as social critic but as an actor-manager who prompts characters when necessary and who even stands in as a younger version of Scrooge before the avaricious rot sets in.
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