Nick Mohammed is best known these days as Nate in the award-garlanded soccer comedy Ted Lasso. But before his football fame kicked off he regularly performed in comic plays as Mr Swallow, a dweeby, power-crazed character with a fondness for Shloer and bossing around his cast members.

 

His latest Swallow outing has a seasonal touch, mashing up A Christmas Carol and Santa Claus. It wasn't ever intended as a mash-up, but he was not quite able to secure the rights to the literary Dickens classic, so Father Christmas has to be the central character visited by ghosts and eventually finding redemption.

 

The family friendly show has plenty of unexpected comic twists and turns. Maybe more than intended on the night I was in as one of the stars, Sarah Hadland (from Miranda) was off sick, meaning that lines and songs were chopped and changed at extremely short notice. Not that you could see the join, apart from when Hadland's absence was mentioned for comic mileage.

 

Oh, did I mention that this is a musical? The book/lyrics are credited to Mohammed, while the catchy music, infectious as, well whatever bug everyone is currently coming down with, is by Oliver Birch. And it's huge, silly fun.

 

Mohammed's squeaky voiced Swallow is joined onstage by his regular longsuffering ensemble of David Elms as Mr Goldsworth and Kieran Hodgson as Jonathan. There's a very nice gag about Hodgson's resemblance to David Tennant, echoing what most of the audience, well, this audience member, was already thinking from the moment Hodgson appeared.

 

If you are wondering why I've not mentioned the plot much in this review it is not because I'm avoiding spoilers,  but because at times it is hard to figure out. Swallow performs from a bed as he is visited by variously spooky apparitions but beyond that the narrative plays pretty fast and loose with the timeline and adding a spot of benign audience participation.

 

Yet even when the plot goes nowhere fast this is all very enjoyable. Swallow plays down his monomaniacal controlling tendencies for a change here and everyone gets their moment to shine. Although it is still Mohammed that shines the most, particularly at the end when he pulls off a magical seasonal stunt that has hopefully been cleared by Soho Theatre's elf and safety department.

 

This Soho run, directed by Matt Peover, has just come to an end, although you can see Mr Swallow doing his greatest hits on tour in 2023. But with any luck we will see it again in the future, either in the same venue or maybe even in a bigger one. There are some lovely intimate moments here, but also some spectacular moments, such as the finale, that would benefit from a bigger stage.