A Christmas Carol

Dundee Rep, November 30-December 31

“I do bitter quite well”.

She may have donned her dungarees as the jolly granny in CBeebies’ Katie Morag but as her other recent appearance on “the Beeb” as gangland matriarch Martina Kennedy in River City shows, Ann Louise Ross can expertly turn up the mean-ometer when called upon.

And being bitter simply goes with the territory when playing Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the iconic characters in Charles Dickens’ canon, who will stalk the Dundee Rep stage for the theatre’s festive interpretation of A Christmas Carol.

“There’s something delightful about playing those darker kinds of characters,” she notes. “But the good thing about Scrooge is that redemption comes quite quickly with The Ghost of Christmas Past reminding the character of the previous wonderful times she had.

“Scrooge realises that she’s lost a lot in her life by being mean and bitter and forgetful of the happy times.”

The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted something rather original going on: a female Scrooge. But as Ann insists, there’s nothing to say that Ebenezer couldn’t be a woman.

“The gender of Scrooge doesn’t make much difference because the story is about love and humanity and caring for one’s fellow man, woman and child. It’s something that Scrooge had not done for years as he gave up the chance of family happiness for money and power.

“Lots of Shakespeare’s main male roles have been taken by women more recently, so there’s no reason why Scrooge can’t be played by a woman: it’s more about what the person is like rather than their sex.”

As well as a female Scrooge, the spirit of his former business partner Jacob Marley is played by Irene Macdougall, while one of the other ghosts also takes on a womanly form in the shape of Emily Winter. This tale of a person who finally sees the good in life and finds hope in the future is a perfect Christmas story, emboldened by another trope of the season: spooky ghosts. Still, that element of the story won’t have Ann up late at night feeling chills.

“I’m not a great ghost story or sci-fi person at all, it’s not my bag,” she insists.

“There’s no doubt that there fewer things better than a good ghostie story for the kids when they were young, though that was more for them and not for me.

“But the thing about the ghosts in A Christmas Carol is that they’re trying to help Scrooge and shake that person up by saying ‘get a grip and look what you’ve missed’. In particular, Marley says ‘look what happened to me as a result of me being like you’.

“So, there’s a lot of goodwill going on with these ghosts.”

dundeerep.co.uk

Ann Louise Ross as Ebenezer Scrooge.