RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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New Scrooge, same old cause
PAUL DONOVAN applauds the dogged determination of the Old Vic to stage Dickens’s classic Christmas moral tale in support of Waterloo food bank
NOTHING TO LOSE BUT CHAINS: Scrooge (John Simm) confronts his erstwhile worker Marley (Mark Goldthorp)
[Manuel Harlan]
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
A Christmas Carol
Old Vic, London
THE annual celebration of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic did not disappoint: it is an explosion of energy from an excellent cast, anchored by the outstanding John Simm playing Scrooge.
This is the eighth year that the Old Vic has performed A Christmas Carol, making it a real festive curtain raiser for the many who attend. The play represents Christmas writ big, celebration and joy, yet also a very moral story of one man’s redemption.
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