Mark Gatiss' adaptation of the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol returns to Ally Pally's atmospheric Victorian theatre for the third year running.
This time it's Bounds Green resident and voice of Bob The Builder Neil Morrissey hauling his mortal chains across the stage as Marley's ghost - while Matthew Cottle takes the role of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge.
The show starts on Paul Wills' set - dominated by vertiginous filing cabinets and a Dickensian London backdrop - with Jacob Marley comically slumping dead at his desk.
But thereafter Adam Penford's spine chilling production embraces the darker and creepier, rather than comic, elements of this Yuletide ghost story.
The venue itself with its artfully distressed walls adds to the unsettling ambience, and special effects, lighting and projections mean files fly from filing cabinets, a phantom carriage races through the sky, and, a face appears on Scrooge's door knocker.
Then Morrissey's rather grumpy booming ghost arrives to warn his former partner of his potential fate, before the first spectre - a young woman in a white shroud - leads him to the flashback of Christmas past.
Cottle is excellent as the scrimping Scrooge whose flashes of remembrance and humanity flit across his face during a long ghostly night that takes in Mark Theodore's powerful red and gold-clad ghost of Christmas present - complete with puppet children Ignorance and Want - and the silent, gliding black robed figure leading him to his grave as the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.
Penford builds in jolly set pieces with dancing and cheer at Mr Fezziwig's, Fred's and Bob Cratchit's festive parties.
But Gatiss' faithful adaptation sometimes hangs heavy - while Scrooge's poignant relationships with sister Little Fan and fiancée Belle feel underplayed.
But it's a heart-warming touch to have the story narrated by Michael Mears' character - who turns out to be someone relevant to this morality tale - that's ultimately about Scrooge's redemption.
Cottle is as giddy as a goat as he skips around his bedchamber in delight that it's Christmas day and he's not actually dead.
What with a full cast rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful, it's an engaging festive story with added edge, that never quite reaches the emotional highs or jump scares it's aiming for.
A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story runs at Alexandra Palace Theatre until January 4.
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