HOLOGRAPHIC ghosts, original songs and Christmas carols are just a few of the extra Yuletide treats offered by shake ‘n’ stir theatre’s upcoming production of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”.

Shake ‘n’ stir have been knocking the socks off Canberrans and Queanbeyanites for years – think “Animal Farm,” Dracula” and “Jane Eyre” for starters, with “The Twits” coming to The Q next year, too. 

When I catch up by phone to producer and actor Nick Skubij at the company’s home in Brisbane, I sense a certain amount of irritation over all the other “Christmas Carol” shows popping up around the country, not least one billed as “joyous and uplifting” at the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne, based on a traditional West End show. 

But shake ‘n’ stir theatre’s version, praised by “Broadway World” magazine, is in his modest opinion the best, and all the signs are that he’s quite right. 

For the company’s strong history of adaptations and its use of innovative technology, plus the fact that the show has been around for five years in Brisbane, where they can’t get enough of it, augurs well for this slightly darker “Carol”. 

So popular is shake ‘n’ stir’s huge production that next year they’re going to do it with double cast so that they can play simultaneously and overseas arts centres are sniffing at it, including Dubai. 

“We are a bit dirty on these other productions,” Skubij says. “Obviously they noticed we were on to a good thing and everyone wanted a slice of the ‘Christmas Carol’ pie, so now every man and his dog is doing it.”

Usually they play it around this time every year in Brisbane, a bit like “The Nutcracker” in New York, and for that matter in Brisbane, where it vies with “A Christmas Carol” for venues.

Covid, it turns out, has been positive for the company, with a paucity of theatres at home opening the show up to touring, something he says they’ve been wanting to do for some time. 

Skubij plays Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, “the unsung hero”.

“I tend to be consigned to those roles,” he says, explaining that Fred is the polar opposite of stingy Scrooge. Rather, he’s the epitome of the “typical Christmas guy”, obliged to visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve every year when he tries to encourage him to embrace the season, but always dismissed by the old miser with a wave of hand. 

Until, of course, this particular Christmas when there is a kind of reconciliation between Scrooge and Fred at the end.

But it’s not his only role.

“There’s a cast of 10. We all play all sorts of different people… for instance, I play one of the Cratchit children, aged about nine or 10 and I pull it off convincingly,” Skubij says modestly. 

The adaptation has been done by shake ‘n’ stir’s Nelle Lee, last here playing Jane Eyre, but Skubij says they all contributed to the process. 

“We wanted a big-scale, family production, something that families could get together watching, like Christmas movies, or ‘The Nutcracker… people love Christmas and the show caters to that, but it’s not at all old school, it’s wholesome, but it’s something a bit more than that.

“We wanted to remain in the world of Dickens, and be faithful to his feeling, but we’ve updated it with technology and projections, and holographic three-dimensional ghosts.”

The original music has been composed by Salliana Seven Campbell, who composed the score for “The Drover’s Wife” film, played live on stage with multi-layered instrumental sounds, including the old-fashioned sound of the hurdy gurdy to give it “an extra timbre”. 

Audiences should expect incredible scenery, but the show is also “quite dark, with a bit of a thrill, like watching ‘Harry Potters’ when you’re a kid.”

“We are turning ‘A Christmas Carol’ on its head and repackaging it in a 21st century way,” he says. 

“A Christmas Carol”, The Playhouse, December 20-24.