The Chimes
Adapted from Charles Dickens by David Willis
Music by Conor Linehan
Directed by Rob Ellis
Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington
Star rating: 2
In his “goblin story”, The Chimes (1844) Dickens was trying to repeat what he had done so successfully the year before with A Christmas Carol. The result is a very sentimental tale, with supernatural elements, laden with moralising. Even in its original novella form, it’s a weak effort after the richness of Ebenezer Scrooge and co.
David Willis’s brave and ambitious attempt to adapt it as a musical gives us a big cast, a Greek-style chorus driving the narrative, a busy ensemble and lots of walking about. The story, much less familiar to most audience members than A Christmas Carol, tells of Trotty Veck (Dom Ward) a very poor, widowed errand man, living near a church whose chimes dominate his thoughts. He is reluctant to let his daughter Meg (Imogen Front) marry her sweetheart. Then he climbs the church tower, has some scary/warning visions driven by goblins, and wakes up on new year’s day to see sense.
Ward is excellent in this role – sensitive, warm, passionate, distraught and very good at reactive listening of which he has do a great deal in the second act. And Front brings a whole range of emotions to Meg who really does – in the alternative futures scenes – have a pretty rough time. She delights in her love for Richard (Nvaron Anderson – good especially in the second half), and is one of the few people on stage who sings convincingly and in tune.
Sadly some of the chorus singing was neither together nor in tune and many of the solos were weak although Rachel Berg is a highly entertaining show stealer as Mrs Feeder. Some of composer Conor Linehan’s songs are WS Gilbert-style rapid patter and these fail if you can’t hear every word. Part of the problem seems to be that MD, Jonathan Norris – an admirably competent pianist – is seated stage right on the very edge of the Tower’s triangular space where the cast can’t see him. And he isn’t doing much obvious directing anyway. He simply plays the piano accompaniments, often too loudly so that singing is drowned.
The moralising gets wearisome in this quite lengthy show too. Much of it comes straight from Dickens but Ellis has worked on the timelessness of the piece: heartless treatment of the poor in society, injustice, shockingly patronising attitudes and so on. At times it all feels a bit obvious, particularly when, amidst all this Victorian stuff, we suddenly and incongruously get Santa Baby played quietly under the dialogue at the Blarney Hall party.
There are offsetting strengths though, of course. The moment at the end of Act 1 when Veck climbs the tower by going right up a ladder into the quasi-flies is enjoyably dramatic. The costumes (by Emma Efkeman) are lovely. The set of tubular bells, stage left, which represent the titular chimes both visually and aurally works perfectly. And the central movable platform is an effective and very versatile set device.
Obviously, I can only review what I see and I saw this show at its opening performance. It has time to bed down and mature before it closes on 21 December and I’m sure it will get better. In general Tower Theatre Company knows what it’s doing.
