IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
A Dickensian romp
DAVID NICHOLSON, eight-year-old BEHATI and nine-year-old SKYLAR applaud a hilarious production that doesn’t ignore the social message

A Christmas Carol
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
HATS off to the Sherman Theatre for a hilarious and scary production of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.
This was not your usual dramatic take on the ghostly seasonal favourite, but an imaginative and musical version of the classic by writer Gary Owen and director Joe Murphy.
The well-trodden tale of the redemption of a penny-pinching money-lender has been given a seasonal boost by setting it in Cardiff and including comedy, puppets, singing and dancing as well as casting Scrooge as a woman. But the core of the story about Victorian attitudes towards the poor and the state’s violence to those falling on hard times remains. As Skylar noted: “People were cruel to poor people because they had no money.”
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