BWW Reviews: SCROOGE, New Wimbledon Theatre, October 19 2010

When the Ghost of Christmas Past transports Ebenezer back to his schooldays, we see the date written on the blackboard - 24 December 1784. Tommy Steele, as the eponymous Scrooge, wasn't at school then, though he was there during wartime. In a world in which three successive appearances on the X-Factor is enough to be dubbed a showbiz legend, Tommy Steele's 54 years on stage marks an extraordinary career that shows no sign of slowing down.

Scrooge the Musical is a comparative stripling having first been produced in 1992, but it traces its roots back to the Oscar-nominated film of 1970 on which the stage production is based and, more loosely, to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" of 1843. As you would expect of a Bill Kenwright production, there's plenty of spectacle with biscuit tin lid sets with suspiciously unmuddied streets full of clean, bright-eyed urchins and salt-of-the-earth Cockney tradesmen. Amongst the visual cliches, there are splendid illusions created by Harry Potter films magic man Paul Kieve to please kids used to their fix of CGI at the multiplex. The songs punctuating Scrooge's overnight journey from sanctimonious miser to Santa Claus provider, lack the showstoppers made familiar by Radio Two's playlists, but the tunes and lyrics complement with the action and allow the cast to have a bit of fun. And fun they have, with Barry Howard chained and bandaged up as Marley's Ghost and James Head, literally dazzling as the Ghost of Christmas Present, very camp and very hammy the way us Brits like 'em.

The star of the show, basking in the love of the audience from the his first appearance singing M.O.N.E.Y. to his post-curtain call confession of love for us all, is Tommy Steele. He's been round the block with this show and can't dance like he did in Half a Sixpence, but the voice is still serviceable, if lacking a bit of belt. But really, what does that matter in the presence of a man approaching 74 years of age who can still hold the audience for two and a half hours with barely a moment off-stage? If the kids love the sentimental tale and the sensory overload of fantastical costumes and special effects, the grandparents in the audience (of whom there were many) loved seeing one of their own still doing it in 2010. And local boy Tommy loved them back.

Scrooge is at The New Wimbledon Theatre until Saturday October 23