Marley was dead to begin with

http://www.christmascaroluk.com/

Imagine yourself in a small intimate theatre, there is only one man on stage and a few scant props - you are enthralled for two and half hours by the most singular, impressive theatrical performance you have ever seen.

That was us last night watching Patrick Stewart perform 'A Christmas Carol' in a one-man show in London. He played all forty characters in the book and it was amazing how you recognised and empathised with each and every one.

It is truely amazing to believe that one man can take you through nearly the whole range of human emotions, joy, sadness, horror and so on; but Patrick did and did it so well that he was met with a standing ovation, the likes of which we have never seen in our three years of theatre going in London. Just about every person in the theatre leapt to their feet for the first curtain call and stayed that way for four more.

And it didn't stop there..... on our way to catch the tube home, we noticed a small crowd standing outstide the Stage Door and we thought, "what the heck". So we decided to huddle with the others in the hope of glimpsing the great man in person. We waited around fifteen minutes, in which we were treated with seeing Ken Stott (Mr Dursely from the Harry Potter movies and a great English character actor) and Zoe Wanamaker (a grand dame of English theatre and Professor Hooch in Harry Potter) leaving to make way for the one we were all waiting for.

...and out he came, not as tall as I expected, a baseball cap on his head and a marker pen at the ready. He graciously signed autographs for his excited fans. I whipped out my programme and managed to get his autograph and speak with him briefly - oooooooooh - who's in heaven!


Note for Emily - it was our first London theatre production where nobody in the cast had previously appeared in The Bill! For everyone else - Emily had a theory that you couldn't stage a theatrical production in London without at least one actor having appeared in The Bill. Admittedly, up to this point she's been right - but now the magic has been broken.