Humbug is on the menu when A Christmas Carol visits York’s Lamb and Lion Inn. Steve Pratt reports

THERE have been many takes on Charles Dickens’ classic story A Christmas Carol, but none quite like the dinner-theatre version in the top parlour room of the Lamb and Lion Inn in York this month.

The audience not only get to eat a hearty twocourse meal, but have a part to play in getting Ebenezer Scrooge out of his bah-humbug mood and into the festive spirit.

The show from the Flanagan Collective had a brief run last Christmas in the same venue. Now, writer Alexander Wright, associate artist at York Theatre Royal, and director Tom Bellerby, associate director at York-based Pilot Theatre, are returning to Scrooge’s story. “The Lamb and Lion is very much Alex and I’s local, and it began with us having a drink and thinking about A Christmas Carol and how good a version we could make in the top parlour, because the set is already built for you,” explains Bellerby, staff director on Pilot’s recent national tour of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

Then the question of dinner-theatre arose. “When we were rehearsing a show in London in 2011, we were walking around Soho and seeing bars, bistros, cafes advertising communal dining. Seemingly it was a draw – people will actively go and do this,” says Wright, one of the founders of York-based theatre company Belt Up.

THE meal is part of the story in their version which has host Jacob Marley attempting, with the audience’s help, to reform Scrooge and convert him to the joys of Christmas and goodwill to all men over a meal and flagon of ale.

“The structure of the show is that we’ve dispensed with the ghosts, so there’s no longer the spirits of Christmas. It’s a two-hander now – no actually, a three-hander with Marley, Scrooge and the audience,” says Bellerby.

“Marley, always as Marley, takes on the atmospheres and persona of the Spirits of Christmas.

Then, of course, the audience are cast as spirit helpers – an ethereal harem – and go along for the ride.

“The middle section is the meal is where the Ghost of Christmas Present usually appears. We thought what does that ghost do? He shows Scrooge that Christmas is about socialising, about feeling part of a community, it’s joy and stuff. “So Scrooge has that meal with the audience. There’s singing and parlour games. It’s not a meal where everyone is given a plate of food, they have to help themselves and each other.

So the audience will be getting up and walking about.”

Hopefully, Marley and the audience’s good company will persuade Scrooge to be more joyful, more giving. Last year he was to be seen running from the inn and leaping joyfully down the street at the end of the show “What’s great is that the dinner is part of the story. Without that meal Scrooge is damned,” says Bellerby.

AS well as the two actors – Ed Wren as Scrooge and John Holt Roberts as Marley – the staging features two musicians and the promise of more music than in the previous version.

The audience – a maximum of 20 – has a part to play too. “They have to know what their roles are. If the audience doesn’t know what they’re doing in interactive theatre that’s when the uncertainty starts, when it becomes uncomfortable,” says Bellerby.

“I’ve made a few shows using the audience and, for me, the secret is knowing they’re been cast as something.

If they know they’re the spirits they relax that little bit better in their seats because there’s never that feeling that at any minute you’re going to be dragged on stage and asked to do something.”

Last year, the whole production was created in four weeks.

“It had, I guess, a rough and ready sense of theatre.

The more time you spend on it, the more we talk about it, the more you realise it’s a very tender and sad story, but filled with so much joy,” says Wright.

“We only did five or six shows last year, but the reception was great. We had to turn people away from our final shows. But there was a sense we hadn’t done with it. We’re still working on the view we’ll do it again next year and see whether it goes further to more places.”

  • A Christmas Carol: Lamb and Lion Inn, High Petergate, York. Dec 18-30 Tickets £25 (including meal) can be purchased from the Lamb and Lion Inn, 2-4 High Petergate, York, YO1 7EH or by phoning 01904-612078