Scarborough’s seasonal show is a revamp of Charles Dickens’s ever popular A Christmas Carol, like no other, fizzing with fun, overflowing with festive cheer, stripped of all the original’s teary-eyed gloom.

After the glittering success of Pinocchio last year at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, writers Nick Lane and composer/lyricist Simon Slater have teamed up again with resident Director Paul Robinson to breathe new life into the old favourite. It’s probably the most adapted of all of Dickens’s classics but there’s undoubtedly never been one as wacky as this before.

The man who invented Christmas, as the latest film on his life is billing Dickens, peopled his pages with a thousand memorable characters, including Scrooge whose very name has become synonymous with the Christmas killjoy. But he could hardly imagine one day his fable of greed and redemption would lend itself to time travel and cosmic mayhem.

Joey Hickman is irrepressibly springy as the old skinflint contorting his face and body into all manner of grudging poses on his weird futuristic journey into his own past, finding out what exactly it was that turned his heart to stone. Far from being drably dressed, he’s got up in red topper like a circus ring-master, an early clue perhaps to what’s to come.

On his way, he has bizarre encounters with a galaxy of topsy-turvy characters who might have stepped right out of Alice In Wonderland, a walking-talking fan, for example, and a dancing walnut. In this alternative world, Dickens’s most pitiable character, Tiny Tim, has to become a gormless giant to make us roar with laughter at the absurdity of life rather than weep for humanity’s sake! Elliott Rennie does him to a turn, as well as compressing his frame to create a memorable young Scrooge and several other crazy caricatures.

Alicia Mckenzie who has starred in four versions of this story in the last seven years can seldom have been asked to play so many diverse roles at the same time. Yet, warming to her task, she breathes individuality into a variety of send-ups of Victorian stereotypes. It’s the ebullient Anna-Marie Piazza, however, back again for another panto, who manages the impossible - to melt Scrooge’s heart both as Bella, his first love, and as the ghost of Christmas Present.

The multi-talented all-singing, all-dancing cast with energy to burn and amazing skills on a variety of musical instruments busk and tumble their way round the central stage, on an extraordinary carousel, swept along by the hurdy-gurdy of Simon Slater’s music. The soundtrack truly is a triumph in itself, animating, inspiring and controlling the tempo of Scrooge’s dreams and orchestrating some heartfelt moments when we briefly return to the original plot.

How exactly it comes about that everybody in the house, young and old, suddenly find themselves in the middle of a mass snowball fight is difficult to explain – but it’s glorious fun and the ultimate in audience participation.

You won’t want to miss this one. It runs until the 31st of December (2017).