hat has made this Victorian tale of child poverty, stalking apparitions and pathological miserliness chime across the ages? GK Chesterton cited the defeat of humbuggery and triumph of happiness. George Orwell wrote of its myth of moral transformation and the “good rich man, handing out guineas”. More recently Jack Thorne spoke of its resonance in our era of austerity. Nicholas Hytner’s adaptation at the Bridge theatre certainly has an economy of scale. A powerhouse three-strong cast, Simon Russell Beale, Patsy Ferran and Eben Figueiredo, play every character between them alongside song, dance and nimble, poignant puppetry. But the show seems less concerned with austerity than reminding us of the richness of live theatre and offering an imaginative escape from our pandemic-scarred realities. One of many Christmas Carols to drop this season (more a blizzard than a snowy sprinkling), it is an empathically theatrical experience. Having been denied live performance for so long, it is a joy to see it conjured before us so ingeniously. If its cast is small its imagination is big and one which revels in the medium’s mechanics. Actors simultaneously narrate the story as they act it out, sometimes archly, occasionally switching to dialogue. As a production, it invites us to collaborate with its dramatic conjuring, speaking of unseen feasts and people from Scrooge’s past who roam the stage invisibly. The interplay of self-conscious storytelling and dramatic characterisation creates a fizzy dynamic, although the narration dominates and threatens to eclipse the effect of the story itself. There is directorial intelligence from Hytner, but the relatively meagre dialogue means that we never quite sink inside the story to feel our heartstrings being tugged; there is one powerful dialogue about Tiny Tim which instantly sucks us in with its sadness, but the returning narration interrupts too soon. Hytner’s script deftly lifts lines from Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella, adding physical comedy, so that each gag lands a laugh: “…every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stick of holly through his heart,” says Beale. There is panto-inflected campness, too: Figueiredo’s cockney Mrs Cratchit, Beale’s coy “plump sister”, and a sudden burst of disco lights, music and dance. Beale’s Ebenezer Scrooge cuts a morose figure and keeps a steady, charismatic hold on the audience. His slow-moving lugubriousness is offset by Figueiredo’s quickness and mischief, and Ferran’s alternately expressive and deadpan performance. Figueiredo plays several accented characters, some more convincingly than others: his Ghost of Christmas Present is a comical Indian guru. Meanwhile, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is genuinely frightening figure – a cross between Darth Vader and the baleful figure of death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. The set is at first just a sparkly backdrop – lanterns projected on to a screen, Marley’s symbolic chains turned into fairy lights overhead – but sounds, sights and rising shoots of steam come into force to create the illusion of movement and action on stage, even when actors are static. Jon Clark’s lighting tells its own visual story, with an icy finger of white light beamed on to the stage just as the first ghost is about to appear. When the second turns up, light marbles across the set, suggesting a chillingly omniscient phantom presence. The stage is comprised of many boxes which are moved around to become beds, coffins or costume trunks. Tiny Tim is a small, grey-skinned puppet who emerges out of them, too, alongside the play’s other children. At times, the overt and indulgent theatricality feels like a well-acted, slickly executed game of make-belief. But it also tickles and feels by the end to be a delightful ode to live performance. A Christmas Carol is at the Bridge theatre, London, until 16 January.