“Christmas Carol Goes Wrong” at Apollo Theatre
Franco Milazzo in the West End
★★★★★
16 December 2025
If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would surely sue. Failing that, he would probably buy a ticket, sit in the stalls at the Apollo Theatre, and then spend the entire night wondering what kind of civilization needs a giant garish kitchen. Christmas Carol Goes Wrong is not so much an adaptation of Dickens’s moral fable as a hostile takeover executed by the Cornley Polytechnic Amateur Dramatic Society, a troupe so catastrophically inept that it’s a miracle Equity didn’t shut them down before the first ghost clears his throat.
Photo credit: Mark Senior.
At the helm of this festive shipwreck is Dan Fraser as Chris Bean, the Society’s director, producer, lead actor, and general martyr. Fraser plays him with the righteous fury of a man who believes theatre is a sacred calling and that everyone else is an idiot sent to test his faith. He delivers Dickensian earnestness like a man rehearsing for Lear at the National. Every time he insists on “sticking to the text” while the set actively attempts to murder him, it feels less like a joke and more like an insight into what the Devil has in store for naughty thespians.
The rest of the cast can just about cover what is referred to here as the three cornerstones of acting: looking happy, looking sad, and looking hungry. Nancy Zamit’s Fred raises a smile at every turn with their indestructible ability to see the positive in everything regardless of the calamities piling up around them. Max (Matthew Cavendish) attempts to prove his versatility and so jumps between as many roles as he can, placing quantity very much over quality. Jonathan Sayer and Henry Lewis, Mischief Theatre royalty and co-creators of the whole beautiful mess alongside Henry Shields, bring to their characters a level of indefatigable stupidity that only years of training can achieve. Their performances are a reminder that falling over convincingly is an art form and that to carry off even the merest pratfall requires high levels of planning, timing, and total commitment.
Direction from Matt DiCarlo ensures that the chaos unfolds with military precision. This is not random incompetence. This is incompetence on a mission. Libby Todd’s set is the real star, a Victorian picture postcard invaded by bizarre and bizarrely huge props. Stage lights and coins fall from the sky, a van makes an unexpected appearance and the macabre interpretation of Tiny Tim will probably scare the pants off children of all ages. Mischief Theatre once again prove themselves the masters of combustible chaos done right.
Photo credit: Mark Senior.
The genius of Christmas Carol Goes Wrong is that it understands something fundamental about British theatre and, indeed, British life. We are a nation held together by apologizing while things fall apart. The Cornley players thankfully do not stop the show when disaster strikes (a two-hour-plus running time is quite sufficient for any farce). They carry on, faces fixed in rictus smiles, whispering threats and prayers with equal intensity. It is less a comedy than a case study in stubbornness.
Yes, the formula will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Play That Goes Wrong or Peter Pan Goes Wrong. Jokes arrive when you expect them, and occasionally hang around like a guest who has missed the last train. But this is Christmas. Predictability is part of the contract. You know the turkey will be dry, the TV terrible, and someone will venture a view too far after one too many sherries. The pleasure lies equally in expectation and realization.
What stops the whole thing becoming mechanical is a strange, unearned tenderness. Beneath the slapstick there is a genuine affection for amateur theatre, that most British of institutions where enthusiasm vastly outstrips talent and yet everyone believes, against all evidence, that this time it might just work. When the cast reminds us of the Cornley Polytechnic Amateur Dramatic Society motto that “the show must go on no matter the human cost”, it lands as both a punchline and a national belief.
In the end, Christmas Carol Goes Wrong does not ruin Dickens. Dickens will survive. What it does instead is offer a loud, collapsing, meticulously staged reminder that Mischief Theatre’s formula is still a winning one. Yes, yes, it is festive, foolish, and deeply reassuring. And, like Christmas itself, it is expensive, slightly exhausting, but somehow worth it.
