Emmerdale's Sally Dexter says bah humbug to tradition as London’s first female Scrooge

Role reversal: Sally Dexter will star in the production at Wilton’s Music Hall
Photograph by Nobby Clark
Robert Dex @RobDexES19 September 2019

Emmerdale star Sally Dexter says signing up to play London’s first female Scrooge is part of a change that has “swept aside” traditional ideas of who plays which roles.

The actress will play the miser’s sister in a new version of A Christmas Carol written by children’s author Piers Torday, it was announced today. It will be performed at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London from November.

In the new version, Ebenezer Scrooge died at a young age and his sister Fan married Jacob Marley. After his death, she inherited the money-lending business, becoming the notorious miser of Dickens’s tale.

There has been a huge increase in gender-blind casting in recent years, with actresses taking on roles that were previously off limits. Glenda Jackson played King Lear at the Old Vic and Rosalie Craig turned Company’s man-about-town Bobby into a female Bobbie.

Dexter said: “The blinds and the curtains have been swept aside and there’s a lot more light being let in to all sorts of things and that’s brilliant because it allows more people to feel included in what sometimes may have felt a very enclosed, privileged world.”

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She said the show was “not a feminist rant”, adding: “Though there is a fair bit of ranting by me, but Piers has just got that humour into it, it’s funny and it’s dry. There is everything to be gained by expanding it and that’s what this does. It absolutely covers the same ground that is covered ordinarily, if I can use that word, but it goes much further and it does it with wit.”

Dexter, who plays Faith Dingle in ITV soap Emmerdale, has previously won plaudits for another Dickensian role — as Nancy in a revival of Oliver!

She said of the novelist: “The atmosphere he creates is quite extraordinary. His descriptions are vibrant and alive and they do translate onto the stage beautifully.”

Christmas Carol — A Fairy Tale runs at Wilton’s Music Hall from November 29 to January 4

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