GHOSTED – ANOTHER F**KING CHRISTMAS CAROL at The Other Palace
★★★★★
“It is a rib-tickling celebration of queer culture. The Play That Goes Wrong meets Queer Eye, with a sprinkling of Have I Got News For You”
‘Tis the season of way too many Dickens adaptations, but as you can most likely tell by the subtitle, “Another F***ing Christmas Carol,” this is very much not a standard version of the Christmas classic.
Written by Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper and directed by Andrew Beckett, the team behind the celebrated adult pantomimes for Above The Stag Theatre, Ghosted may just be my favourite festive show of the year. Hilariously self-aware, it was set firmly in 2022, with pop culture references, political jokes and many, many references to queer culture.
It begins with three carol singers in period dress, holding traditional, Victorian style lanterns. They start singing a beautiful carol, until they are interrupted by Bobbi Cratchitt (played with incredible comic timing by Nikki Biddington), running in late, through the audience, wearing a bright Christmas jumper and reindeer antlers. This riotous beginning brings the story into the present and sets the tone for the whole piece. When the carol singers get chatting about their terrible boss stories (very relatable – we all have one!), Bobbi Cratchitt begins to tell us about Eloisa Scrooge (Natalie Boakye) and three queer ghosts (all hysterically camp, played by Christopher Lane) who give her a makeover on Christmas Eve. The rest of the story loosely follows the plot of A Christmas Carol, with a few surprise twists and turns.
The cast is made up of just four people, switching effortlessly between all the characters, and every member was as strong and hilarious as the rest. Although a standout moment for me was Liam McHugh, switching between playing a mother and son in the same scene. A fantastic ensemble with brilliant chemistry, who all had stunning singing voices. Their creative and sweary updates on classic Christmas carols were sung beautifully, with gorgeous harmonies, along with a hefty dose of F words, and even a few C bombs… it is certainly not a show to bring the children along!
The set (designer David Shields) is a purely white room, with very few props (Isla Rose) or set pieces, meaning a small amount of imagination was required. The costume design was very much the same, a couple of key items for the quick changes between the characters. But there were many jokes made of this, and it became a running gag throughout the piece. Paper chain decorations became the chains around “Jacob Rees-Marley”, and with a few subtle lighting (Oli Matthews) and sound effects (Joel Mulley), the stage became an office, a flat, a dining room, a beach, and even a nightclub smoking area.
It is a rib-tickling celebration of queer culture. The Play That Goes Wrong meets Queer Eye, with a sprinkling of Have I Got News For You – heart-warming, without being sickly sweet – it is exactly what is needed in the current climate, and I didn’t stop laughing throughout.
“John Sackville and Paul Rider command the stage throughout and restore the sense of period with their finely nuanced performances”
It’s difficult to imagine now that when Charles Dyer’s “Staircase” was first produced for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, the Lord Chamberlain savaged the script, demanding cuts. A few expletives had to go (beggar replaced bugger), as were some fairly innocent references that were deemed to have a ‘homosexual’ context. But the hugging was allowed. The irony is that Covid 19 has finally achieved what the Lord Chamberlain couldn’t. The two actors in Tricia Thorns’ revival at Southwark Playhouse don’t touch. Thorns always suspected that lifting the restrictions would be delayed and so she took that into account. Whether intentional or not, this distancing has the fortunate side effect of heightening the sense of secrecy, surreptitiousness and suppression that surrounded same-sex relationships in the sixties.
Dyer’s two-hander is very much a period piece. Set in a Brixton barber’s shop it explores the fear and insecurity felt by Charlie and Harry (John Sackville and Paul Rider respectively); two gay men who run the salon. It examines what Oscar Wilde described as ‘the love that dare not speak its name’. In 1966, if you were gay you could end up in jail. Of course, times have changed hugely since then, but the sense of isolation and loneliness that Sackville and Rider bring to their roles still resonate.
It is tempting to read into the script the autobiographical content – especially as the playwright has used his own name for one of the characters, and an anagram for the other. Charles Dyer and Harry C Leeds are an odd couple. We know they are a couple, but there are moments when that certainty falters, and we are reminded of the bygone television sketches in which Morecambe and Wise are sitting up in bed in their pyjamas. There is often too much innocence and ‘playing it safe’ in Dyer’s script which is undoubtedly a result of the time in which it was written, but it does soften the impact of the message.
In today’s climate this might be a struggle for the actors to get a solid grip on the characters and there is the constant danger of the writing appearing dated. But John Sackville and Paul Rider command the stage throughout and restore the sense of period with their finely nuanced performances. Sackville’s Charlie is a bit of an egoist, and very much in denial. An actor who hasn’t acted for over a decade and a father who hasn’t met his daughter yet. With a failed marriage behind him, he is clinging onto this fragile façade as a defence in an upcoming trial for dressing in drag and sitting on a man’s lap. Rider, as Harry – the slightly older lover, teases and torments while betraying an underlying hurt that Charlie is denying him his one stab at happiness.
After the interval the play gathers momentum as the disagreements give way to a vague harmony. It remains unresolved though, which reflects the brittle hope that the characters feel. A change is coming, but for the moment it’s not quite enough for them.
In retrospect, that change was a long time coming. Yes, we have come a long way since the sixties, but this show can serve as a reminder that there is still a way to go. Stigmas may disappear but internal repression often pervades. “Staircase” begins as a comedy but step by step you discover two lonely souls, unable to fully be themselves, or be with each other. It’s a fairly slow ascent, but the final touches to the piece are reward enough for making the climb.
