Melbourne can’t get enough of Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas tale. The traditional Old Vic stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol is back, while MTC has a new take full of Jewish humour tempered by intergenerational grief.

Melbourne Theatre Company’s A very Jewish Christmas Carol. Photo © Pia Johnson

Written by Elise Esther Hearst with Phillip Kavanagh, A Very Jewish Christmas Carol adapts Dickens’ basic premise of a grumpy person visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Instead of Ebenezer Scrooge we have Elysheva Scroogavitz, a modern Jewish woman who is heavily pregnant and grieving her recently deceased Gentile fiancé, Ben.

As we see in one of this play’s peeks into the past, they had previously enjoyed fusing Christmas and Hanukkah. Now Ely rejects all festive celebrations, as well as family and friends: mum Fran, sister Sarah, Rabbi Rivka and Ben’s mother, Carol.

At the bakery she inherited from her Bubi (granny), whose delicious gingerbread recipe remains a frustrating mystery, Ely has a series of supernatural visitors: the ghost of Bubi, a reindeer possessed by a dybbuk (spirit), a golem in the form of a life-size gingerbread figure, and Lilith...