Gemma Bodinetz talks to Damon Fairclough about directing A Christmas Carol – her final production as artistic director of the Everyman & Playhouse.

This has been the strangest year, so how are you feeling about being able to create a Christmas show at the Playhouse after all that’s happened?

Incredibly excited. I suspect that on the first day of rehearsals, we’ll be in slight shock that we’re all together reading a play and thinking of performing it live. It's been a horrible year for everybody in so many ways, so I’m very excited about this.

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Why have you chosen Patrick Barlow’s version of A Christmas Carol?

When we were thinking about what we could do, we thought a beautiful chamber show for families at the Playhouse would be the right thing – because it’s been a hard year, and as an organisation we’ve been pushing ourselves to try and at least give Christmas to Liverpool.

A Christmas Carol’s themes are about a lonely person discovering what it is to miss humanity, and that felt poignant. Some of us who aren't normally lonely have been placed in a lonely situation due to the virus, and have come to really appreciate what it is to need people, and to need physical contact and friendship.

I've always loved Patrick Barlow’s National Theatre of Brent, and what's great about this version is that it only needs a handful of performers – which is great for social distancing – and it has the wit and magic to be very upfront about that.

We wanted a small show that could deliver a big show, in the way that things like The 39 Steps (also by Patrick Barlow) and Baskerville have done for us in the past. With a show like this, it’s possible for a small number of people to deliver a full four-course meal, and that's what we were looking for given all the constraints we'll have.

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Do you think social distancing will affect the audience’s experience?

We were keen to choose a show where a reduced-capacity audience would still work. It’s an absolute priority to keep people safe, so it will be a fraction of the usual Playhouse audience – about a third of the theatre’s capacity – but I wanted a show that is so magical and entrancing that you can forget you're not sitting next to somebody. With this show, we can wrap the audience in festive jollity, like a comfort blanket. We can say “we’re together, we’re safe, and it’s Christmas”. 

I think part of what we miss about the live experience is each other. I know digital theatre's great, but the thing it can't do is give you the audience. So I want to make sure that the audience is completely entranced in something so magical and tender that they forget they're sitting two metres away from the next person.

And if we get the right group of actors, they’ll be very playful with it. The performance will be socially distanced too, so passing props or shaking hands or any of the things we usually take for granted will have to be rethought. We should have fun with it.

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The key themes of A Christmas Carol are well known, but what are you hoping to focus on?

At the moment, I find myself retweeting and reposting the 'Be Kind' message. The world feels quite frightening, and I think the message of A Christmas Carol is forgiveness. I think Bob Cratchit’s ability to forgive is one of the most beautiful things about it. Ebenezer's epiphany is important, but the thing that always moves me is the Cratchits’ ability to forgive, and that feels potent at the moment – the idea that we need to be kind to each other, and to recognise that lots of people have had quite the worst year. What people have been through requires us all to hold hands, metaphorically at least, and be gentle with each other.

It’s the perfect story in difficult times I think – a story about generosity and the need for humanity.

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What kind of production are you hoping to achieve?

I hope it's magical, I hope it's very funny. And tender and beautiful. There’ll be puppetry and there’ll be singing, though we might have to be more acoustic and more a cappella than we might normally be. We’ll be having Christmas carols in it, but we’ll be rearranging them, and possibly other music too. 

So I hope it has an authentic beauty and tenderness about it as well as being very funny. It should be funny, tender, heartwarming – and ridiculous!

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Lots of Playhouse regulars will remember Spymonkey’s version of A Christmas Carol in 2018. How different will this one be?

I adored that show, but it was very surreal at times, whereas Patrick Barlow’s version is a more traditional rendering of the story even though it still has humour and a lovely emotional connection.

It’s more traditional, but it still has its tongue in its cheek. It’s a playful version, not heavy, and I think people who are studying it at school, or people who want to introduce their children to this story for the first time, will enjoy it.

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As you’ve mentioned, this is a socially distanced production, so how will that work in the rehearsal room and on stage?

It’s the first time I'll have ever rehearsed in this way, or asked a group of actors to perform like this, and it’s quite a challenge after all these years. As a socially distanced production and rehearsal process, it will just be a very safe space while we're directing. We've got all the rules and regulations about how close we can get to each other, and we've given ourselves a little bit longer to rehearse and get used to the rules of engagement.

And I think it will be a pretty locally-based company, just to make life easier, to make travelling easier, and to restrict as much as we can the chances of people coming into contact with the virus.

But yes, it’s a whole new way of working.

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How important is a Christmas show at a time like this?

This is a story that goes from ‘bah humbug’ to joy, and I suppose we hope this show will give people some sense of a cathartic Christmas experience. Because it might be that we can't even share a Christmas experience with our loved ones. 

I want to create a sense that we’re sharing something even though we’ll have social distancing in place – we’ll be a select group of people on any given night. It’ll be a very small audience – about 170 people over the Playhouse’s three levels – so we want to create our own little family. That’s the thing about theatre. What none of the digital things that many of us have been putting out over the last few months have been able to do is unite people with a group of strangers for two or three hours in a common emotional experience.

And that's Scrooge's journey – from a lonely emotional experience to a shared one. Hopefully we can bring a group of strangers together and let them have a Christmas experience.

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This will be your final show as artistic director of the Everyman & Playhouse after 17 years in the role. How are you feeling about bringing things to a close with A Christmas Carol? 

I feel the whole process of leaving has been incredibly emotional, and I suppose this show is a little Christmas present to Liverpool.

I know I’m hugely connected to the Everyman because so much of my time as artistic director was spent building it, but I’ve loved the Playhouse too. It was where I was settled for some time, and I have so many memories of it.

I was clearing out my Playhouse office just recently, which was something I’d put off for a while. There were Post-It notes from 2008 still on the wall, and I was opening drawer after drawer of brochures that we made, cards I got from people, photos of productions, all kinds of things. So although I keep using the word 'tender' to describe this show, it’s how I feel about the Playhouse too.

And one of the great things about this theatre is that it was designed as a music hall for one performer in the centre of the stage, so it's a good theatre to socially distance in. A small group of people can really fill that space. 

I think the thing that the cast, the design team and I will be out to achieve will be for audiences to forget that they’re socially distanced, and to feel that we’re delivering a proper Christmas show – one that feels like the wondrous thing that it should be. That will be a challenge in some ways, but it’s an exciting one.

Can we, with a fraction of the audience, and rehearsing in a new way, really make it feel like the best A Christmas Carol that people have ever seen?

That’s the little challenge I’ve set myself, and I want this show to be a small, perfect gift – to both me and the city.

A Christmas Carol is at the Playhouse from Saturday 5 December to Thursday 24 December 2020.