Count Arthur Strong -The Castle Theatre Wellingborough

The Count

It's very nice to be at The Castle Theatre in Wellingborough for the first time. Quite surprising as it is only 8 miles up the road! First impressions are good. Plenty of parking, the staff are really helpful and it has a very personal feeling about it.We are here tonight for the 'Count Arthur Strong' take on the Dickens Christmas classic 'A Christmas Carol'. For those of you unfamiliar with 'The Count, he is the creation of 'Steve Delaney' back in the 1980's. The opinionated, muddled and ageing thespian is not to everyone's taste. I found his BBC series hard work compared to the superb radio shows.

The first half is The Count in the role of Charles Dickens. However it may well be Charles Dance, David Dickenson or Dickie Davies? Such is the confusion as he tries to merge Dickensian life into that of the modern day. It is very hard to keep up with where we actually are. The distracted ramblings are great fun though. Somewhere along the line we delve into a monologue about a 'Hillman Minx', amongst many others. The first half ends with a magic show, the Master of Confusion attempts to become the Master of Illusion. All with catastrophic results as you might well have expected.

The second half is the one man portrayal of 'A Christmas Carol'. He is assisted by a ventriloquist dummy playing the part of 'Tiny Tim'. Further support is provided by the ghosts of Jacob Marley, and Christmas Past, Present and Future. These all appear on a large video on the back of the stage. The only two I recognised were' Julian Clary' and 'Anita Harris'. The chaos continues at pace and it is non stop hilarity. It all ends with a happy ending tough some how, which is the main thing. The show ends with a brilliant version of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. This is interspersed with a 'Shot' for each round of the song. The results are easy to predict and it is complete and utter carnage but very funny. It was a great night and lovely to catch up with Steve afterwards. I did ask him if he was the person to see for a refund? This had been something of a standing joke throughout the show. He was as good fun fun out of character , which is always nice to witness.Catch him while you can , you won't regret it!