In a production rich in ghosts and spirits, the character could almost be Michael Jackson at the start of the Thriller tour. Instead, the image marks the striking first appearance of Ebenezer Scrooge.

For children brought up on the sanitised Disney version of Dickens's festive mainstay, Bryony Lavery's adaptation is unnervingly dark and this is certainly an unsuitable production for a very young audience.

Capturing the penny-pinching misery of a life gone wrong, a ghoulish, pallid chorus drag themselves around the largely monochrome stage in tattered Victorian costumes. Scrooge (Philip Whitchurch) views them with contempt from atop a wooden office strewn sky-high with papers, counting his pennies as he rationalises that charity is an unnecessary extravagance when there are prisons, workhouses and the Poor Law.

He is forced to challenge these views during night-time visitations by the tormented spirit of erstwhile business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come. These time-traveling apparitions show him memories of his happy past, his cruel present and his miserable future with colour-coded scene changes and illustrative songs.

The real strength of Nikolai Foster's production is that it leaves much to the imagination. This makes it all the more disturbing when dervishes dance around and clatter the ground with chains before Marley (Paul Leonard) emerges from whirling dry ice or when a large projected timepiece, accompanied by people manipulating clock faces, marks the hours until the appearance of the Ghost of Christmas Past (Rob Compton) amid atonal clanks and shrieks.

But most terrifying of all is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come (Vlach Ashton). A huge, cloaked demon who's only seen in shadow, it is little surprise that Scrooge appears so hysterically, giddily happy when it vanishes from his bedchamber.

Between pyrotechnics and swirls of glitter, it is possible that the true Christmas spirit may have also touched the audience for just long enough to put the Wii to one side for a while.

Runs until January 15. Box office: (0113) 213-7700