A Christmas Carol review: Jim Broadbent is a West End Scrooge to spread festive cheer

Acting legend Jim Broadbent makes his long-awaited return to the stage in this high-spirited West End production of A Christmas Carol, with just enough imagination and enthusiasm to win over the most hardened of humbuggers.

Playwright Patrick Barlow is the latest name to put his stamp on the Charles Dickens favourite, following in the snow-trodden footprints of Kermit the Frog, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey and a singing Kate Winslet. This time, Harry Potter star Broadbent is at the helm (who himself has previous with the festive fable, playing Prince Albert in the excellent Blackadder's Christmas Carol).

Broadbent - fresh from his turn in the BBC drama London Spy - brings an entertaining physicality to the role of Scrooge, all hunched shoulders and lurching shuffles, while his wild tufts of hair seem to be putting on their own entirely separate performance as the play progresses.

Such is the affection for Jim Broadbent The Actor though, it's hard to buy into him as the curmudgeonly miser (here portrayed as the equivalent of a modern-day, bonus-obsessed banker, knowing winks to the audience aplenty).

So it doesn't take much to get behind Ebenezer Broadbent's redemption story, and Barlow goes deeper into the character's early years than most adaptations, specifically expanding upon Scrooge's relationship with his mother. It adds a welcome extra dimension to his ultimate awakening that fits the Moulin Rouge! star like a cosy, woollen glove.

The production treads a similar line to Barlow's other great stage success The 39 Steps, making the most of a small cast playing multiple roles. Samantha Spiro (soon to be seen in Game of Thrones season 6) has a hoot as the Ghost of Christmas Present - think slapstick clown meets Queen Vic landlady - while Utopia's Adeel Akhtar is perfectly cast as the put-upon Bob Cratchit.

Keeping things ticking along in the background are a pair of ensemble puppeteers, providing the extra flourish that takes Scrooge's story into the world of the paranormal. It's in scenes where the whole company comes together that A Christmas Carol is at its playful best - the Cratchit family dinner with Tiny Tim in particular is an inventive and touching highlight.

The spirits are as eclectic as you'd expect. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a haunting and clever conception, while the chained Jacob Marley is genuinely ghoulish. The very youngest theatre-goers may find the pair a shade intense, but the scenes - like the play as a whole - are peppered throughout with a comedic sensibility that never allows the darker elements to take over.

Anyone looking for a daring reinterpretation of the Dickens story won't find it here, as the production stays loyal to the festive classic. In fact, one meta moment in the second act which threatens to take the tale in a new direction is a misstep, and undoes some of the emotional heft of Scrooge's conversion.

By the end of proceedings though, A Christmas Carol's sheer energy and rosy-cheeked merriment succeeds in creating that warm Yuletide glow. And besides, watching an Oscar winner bound across the stage like a giddy child on Christmas Day morning is enough to send anyone into the cold night wishing peace on earth and goodwill to all.

A Christmas Carol is running at London's Noel Coward Theatre until January 30.