Two Christmastime classics close the book on the Shaw Festival’s Royal George Theatre

I’ve never watched a play from inside a ghost before. Or at least I hadn’t – not before seeing A Christmas Carol at the Shaw Festival’s Royal George Theatre, set to be closed to the public for a lengthy renovation which will see it shuttered until at least 2028.

The Christmas Carol playing there now is quintessential Shaw Festival. Its actors speak in posh, faux-British accents; its design features meticulously considered costumes and a playful set. (Both are designed by Christine Lohre.) Artistic director Tim Carroll’s production is exactly what you might expect from a Shaw Carol: deeply charming, if a bit quirky.

But the surrounding theatre – its chiselled wooden ornaments, its outdated basement bar, its gilded red walls – at times feels as much a character in the play as Scrooge or Marley, a pre-emptive ghost of all the theatre still to come at the second-largest repertory theatre company in North America.

There’s no arguing that the Royal George needs updating. The Shaw Festival purchased the theatre, a First World War-era roadhouse, in 1981 and completed several upgrades: The company finalized the theatre’s distinctive, Georgian-esque facade and gussied up the building’s interior.

But 40 years later, the theatre is starting to sag – literally. Its foundation has slowly begun to give way, according to the Shaw Festival, and its interior architecture hasn’t kept up with contemporary accessibility standards. There are stairs at every turn, it seems, and Shaw’s core audience is getting old enough for those extra steps to pose a substantive barrier to enjoying the festival’s programming.

Until renovations are complete, the Shaw will use the Court House Theatre for its smaller, more intimate productions, and its Studio Theatre for the shows even tinier and cozier than those. (Musicals and crowd-pleasers will remain in the comfortably large Festival Theatre.)

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For now, it’s a touch bittersweet to take part in the Royal George’s final gasps. There’s history in the walls, phantoms in the air – when you take your seat, you’re intimately aware that the antique space has borne witness to over a century’s worth of stories.

But then again, A Christmas Carol offers the theatre an admirable, appropriate send-off, a tale that since 1843 has shown readers and audiences the benefit of holding fast to hope for the future.

Before we meet Ebenezer Scrooge (Sanjay Talwar), the cast comes out to sing a few – surprise – Christmas carols, bells in hand, with lyrics projected on Lohre’s marvellous advent calendar-inspired set. (It’s here you may discover that Jingle Bells has quite a few more verses than you remember.)

Soon enough, it’s Dickens o’clock, and Scrooge’s greed meets its match in the form of three ghosts, represented onstage through a blend of actors (Gabriella Sundar Singh and Kristopher Bowman) and lovely puppets (crafted at Den Nationale Scene in Norway).

It’s not a particularly revolutionary Christmas Carol, but it’s not half-bad, either. Talwar is funny and fastidious as Scrooge, and like Michael Caine in The Muppet Christmas Carol, his take on the ultimate Grinch is unhindered by the fact that several of his scene partners are three feet tall and made of felt. Improv whiz Travis Seetoo makes a terrific Bob Cratchit, as well.

But it’s the framing of this final Carol in the Royal George – the loving odes to Niagara-on-the-Lake in Lohre’s painted scenery, and the warm-hearted singalongs to classic Christmas tunes – that makes the production stick. Carroll’s not afraid to give into the sentimentality of the season, and while the production’s pacing is a touch erratic, its homages to the surrounding building and town are just ducky.

The temporary closure of the Royal George is undoubtedly bittersweet. But if White Christmas, currently playing down the street at the Festival Theatre, is anything to go by, audiences need not mourn too long. A Globe and Mail Critic’s Pick, Kate Hennig’s production is rich and succulent, a decadent musical with show-stopping tap choreography by Allison Plamondon and nostalgic songs by Irving Berlin.

The story’s about the same as in the 1954 film: Performers Bob Wallace and Phil Davis (Jeff Irving and Kevin McLachlan) meet another singing duo, the Haynes sisters (Camille Eanga-Selenge and Mary Antonini), just before the holidays. Before long, all four find themselves at a lodge in Vermont for Christmas, where they decide to stage a revue as a fundraiser for the inn’s owner, an old friend of Bob and Phil’s.

As classic a Christmas romance as a tale can get, of course, chaos ensues – but so does a remarkably unfussy love story that embodies all the feel-good values of the holiday season.

White Christmas is everything I wished for from this summer’s rather sluggish Anything Goes – the tap dancing is sublime, and Hennig’s accomplished cast makes the work look nearly effortless (Eanga-Selenge’s performance is a standout, vocally speaking). Judith Bowden’s set and costumes only add to the feeling of luxury achieved by the work itself and by Hennig’s staging of it.

A formulaic Christmas musical? Perhaps. But White Christmas is executed to such high-energy precision that I’m not sure I care. And while I’m looking forward to seeing the new-and-improved Royal George Theatre in a few years, I’m equally hoping to see the Shaw Festival adhere to the standard set by White Christmas, a dandy, good-natured ghost of Christmas present.