Digging out our library file to discover when I’d last seen Tommy Steele in Scrooge (I hadn’t), I chanced upon a picture of the young entertainer at the New Theatre in 1968. He was playing the central role of Truffaldino in Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters.
I was interested to see that Michael Billington, reviewing the production in the West End, called it “as English as boiled beef and carrots”. In this it can be seen to have been the precursor of Richard Bean’s updating of the play (retitled One Man, Two Guvnors and set in Brighton) for the National Theatre. This is enjoying a sell-out run at the Adelphi Theatre, with James Corden as the servant. Will he still be delighting audiences when he’s 75, as Steele is this week?
Mention of boiled beef and carrots reminds me of a culinary matter to do with Scrooge, indeed with A Christmas Carol. Dickens has the reformed miser presenting Mrs Cratchit with an absolutely enormous uncooked turkey — on Christmas morning.
With some 11 hours of roasting ahead — as a Victorian Delia might have told the author — the Cratchits’ five-strong brood face a very long wait for their festive feast.
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