Count Arthur Strong is Charles Dickens in ‘A Christmas Carol’ ★★★★★

As sure as eggs is eggs, with the first fall of autumn leaves, the inbox of review site editors will receive visits not of past or present, but of future productions of A Christmas Carol. The number of traditional versions of Dickens’ timeless tale in the UK alone is well into double figures this year. God bless them, every one – but there is the risk that a humbuggy sense of déjà vu will set in.

The Ghost of Christmas Present’s invocation to “Come in, and know me better, man!” is increasingly challenging when, year after year, prop departments around the country have to dust off the crutch, the candles and the outsized chains for yet another year. We’ve had musical takes like Scrooge!, various animated versions with Mickey Mouse and Scrooge McDuck, and The Flintstones, an iconic Muppet adaptation and even this year, the Bollywood-inspired (if that’s the right word) cinema floperoonie, Christmas Karma. How one might yearn that we decrease the surplus population of these endless samey adaptations or find a fresh take to relieve this deadly Dickensian drudgery.

But like some theatrical Stars In Their Eyes, the doors open, and the showbiz smoke parts to reveal (that tonight, Matthew) Count Arthur Strong Is Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol.

As befits a variety entertainer such as Count Arthur, he opens the show with There’s No Business Like Showbusiness – except changing it to There’s No Dickens Like Charles Dickens – and of course, since he is playing the aforementioned author, we are treated to lines like “everything about me is so appealing” with nary a blush of modesty.

Enthusiastically greeted by the sellout Scarborough audience, the stage is set for an entirely unique take on the much-loved seasonal classic. As Arthur informs us, “All the world’s a stage, and each of us play with our parts.” Ever the genial host, when the mood takes him, lest we stumble into the world of Dickens unprepared, Arthur has prepared a presentation, pitched somewhere between a TED Talk and a fever dream, introducing Charles Dickens and the Victorian era for the uninitiated. Naturally, for someone who views his own life through a lens of confusion, assuming the character of Charles Dickens is like adding the bifocals of befuddlement.

Even getting the author’s name right proves elusive. Charles Dance. Charlie Dickie Davies. David Dickison. The seemingly effortless dexterity that performer Steve Delaney wields as Arthur constantly misnames Dickens as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, across the whole show, is incredible. Not that Arthur displays any surer grasp of the works penned by the preeminent Victorian author. Whether describing evil Melanie Sykes and her dog, Bulleye, or waxing lyrical about my masterpiece, Great Ejaculations, this is a gloriously skewed, profoundly silly perspective on Dickens.

Honouring Dicken’s love of magic (the author performed at family parties as “The Unparalleled Necromancer”), Count Arthur attempts his own set of tricks for your entertainment. As well as feeling very much in the wheelhouse of an entertainer from the Music Hall era who thrived on optimism rather than talent, this section gives the audience a much-needed breather from the relentless onslaught of malapropisms, tangents, and flights of fancy. It may come as no surprise; he’s no David Copperfield. Either of them.

All this is mere Brussels sprouts and stuffing to the eagerly anticipated main course: Count Arthur’s one-man performance of A Christmas Carol. One of the true delights of that character that Delaney has truly mastered over the years is the contradictory push and pull within Count Arthur. One minute, he’s delighting in having a stage for his whimsical, if occasionally incomprehensible, flights of fancy; the next, he is dyspeptically grumbling that “old muggins here” has to play all the characters and railing at imagined sleights surrounding him. He’s truly part Leer and part Lear.

“You don’t need me to tell you the story. I’m sick to the back teeth of it,” grumbles Arthur. Reader, I almost cheered. The Dickens story merely provides a familiar framework where Arthur can do what he does best. But more than that, there’s something about the literature of the subject that quietly highlights Delaney’s writerly craftsmanship in writing his alter ego. Amidst the three-beat jokes and the callbacks, he has perfected the character’s stream of consciousness, filtered through Arthur’s declarative Vaudevillian presentational style that sputters and breaks down as his trademark malapropisms and tangents interrupt his rhythm and derail his best intentions.

While other adaptations this year are offering warm and fuzzy nostalgia, Count Arthur gets into the spirit(s) of the season to round off the show with his own hilarious rendition of The Twelve Days Of Christmas – taking a shot on each verse with suitably messy results. He may well be asking what day it is tomorrow.