(♪ "I Saw Three Ships")
You know, everybody knows this story because it's about change.
It's about people's capacity to be able to change at any time in their lives.
And it's about social responsibility. It's about love, really.
It's the great unrequited love story, I think.
Matthew and I'd been talking with a dear friend of mine, a writer friend of mine,
about putting on a production next year, potentially.
And so when the crisis hit,
he got back a few months later and just said, "How about Scrooge?"
And I didn't quite know if I should be insulted or actually flattered,
but either way, I'm here.
The truth is that I, under normal circumstances,
I would be in the audience this Christmas watching this production
because I've seen two out of three of the last years' productions.
Because it's this magical,
beautiful, perfect theatrical production, in my opinion.
And I've become a complete fanboy for these productions.
I think that Jack Thorne, who adapted this version of A Christmas Carol,
has written such a beautiful, spare, poetic,
but really emotional, almost like a Freudian insight.
The father isn't present in the novel.
And what he's done is just by pushing forward this very dark, brooding,
oppressive presence of the father,
you understand where he was created, you know.
I love this theatre. It's a sort of landmark historic theatre.
For 200 years, it's had some of the greatest theatre performers of our time.
But the thing that I love most about this theatre and the policy of the theatre
is that it's a community theatre.
There's a definite sense of energy in here that
The reason I became an actor is because of my local theatre.
I worked as a waiter at the Bath Theatre Royal
and that's how I fell in love with theatre,
and watched Richard Harris in Pirandello four times — and that's why I'm here.
Without these kind of community theatres,
I think the lifeblood of our industry will disappear.
My only Christmas wish is that as quickly as possible audiences are back in theatres.
That's all we're wishing for, to just basically hobble through
until we can all be back together and to be able to connect with people again.