There are no stars no great scenes that draw us in no

There are no stars; no great scenes that draw us in; no characters we take to our hearts; no sense of humour; no director like Hal Prince to make sense of it all; and no helicopter.A very different kind of musical arrives at the Dominion, after several seasons of touring. It’s the Leslie Bricusse version of Scrooge, first seen as a film with Albert Finney (in 1970), and here starring the former child actor, cabaret singer, and ex-husband of Joan Collins, Anthony Newley.There he stands, head sunk into his shoulders, crinkly hair, thick eyebrows, narrow sunken eyes, muttering away, drumming his fingers on his waistcoat pocket (as if practising his scales) and lapping up the applause. There are the other actors, dutifully standing upstage, shivering in the dark. As the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future visit Newley’s Scrooge, we wonder yet again whether the old codger will have a change of heart? Is this a man, who even at Christmas time, is going to share any of the limelight?Scrooge is unashamedly a star vehicle. And the only spirit that has visited this very traditional production is the one of Christmas Past Newley spends an hour-and-a-half on stage.

He’s consistently watchable, he can sing and act, in an old, hammy way – and would probably chew gum too, if it would help pull the focus The old pro deserves whatever he’s getting paid. Tudor Davies’s production has an attractive pantomime atmosphere, Paul Kieve’s illusions – of figures disappearing into mirrors, and so on – bring an innocent charm, and Paul Farnsworth’s Dickensian sets conjure up a nostalgic world of chestnuts sold in high, narrow streets. Only Bricusse’s soapy music, that keeps sounding like the softer sections of a 1970s Bond movie, seems out of place.Jason Donovan’s recent flop in Night Must Fall would have left the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, dark for two months before Jessica Lange’s arrival in A Streetcar Named Desire. To fill the slot, producer Bill Kenwright has imported a superb one-woman show from America, Shakespeare For My Father, by Lynn Redgrave – Michael’s daughter, and Vanessa and Corin’s sister.Redgrave threads passages from Shakespeare in and out of the story of her childhood and life in showbiz: auditions, first role, rehearsals with the famous, etc.

She delivers sharp impersonations of Edith Evans, Noel Coward and Maggie Smith (all from rehearsals of Hay Fever at the National). She mimics her future brother-in-law, Tony Richardson, directing her in A Midsum- mer Night’s Dream (“I want you to be a giraffe”) and offers childhood memories of Vanessa, Corin and, repeatedly, her father.All this would be enjoyable enough – one of those Sunday-night entertainments thrown together by famous actors, where you expect a glass of wine to be included in the ticket price. But Shakespeare For My Father is in quite a different league. Troubled, confessional, ironic, it’s closer to the sort of cool-eyed memoir you might read in Granta.For Lynn Redgrave, her father was more alive onstage than off, easier to understand as Lear, Richard II or Shylock than as himself. Over and above the inevitably arch reminiscences, Lynn Redgrave brings a surprising frankness – tart and rarely self-indulgent – to her descriptions of the child in search of the parent. Early on, she looks up the day she was born in her father’s diary, to discover references to lunching at the Garrick and who came backstage after his performance, yet no mention of her arrival. This sense of exclusion, from her birth to his death (when her flowers were left off his coffin), fuels the show, giving it a compelling tenderness.