Gareth Williams will play Ebenezer Scrooge in Derby Theatre’s production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a revival of Sarah Brigham’s show from 2014.
Williams, a singer with the accapella pop group The Flying Pickets in the 1980s, played Hodgson the gardener in the 2018 tour of Agatha Christie and Frank Vosper’s Love From a Stranger.
Oliver Ashworth and Charlotte Workman will play Mr and Mrs Cratchit. Workman played one of the Muggle-Wumps in the 2016–17 Leicester Curve tour of Roald Dahl's The Twits.
The rest of the cast comprises Liz Jadav, James McLean, Benedict Salter, Aimee Kwan and Sophia Hatfield.
Three teams of young actors from Derbyshire and Staffordshire will alternate roles including Tiny Tim, Boy Scrooge and urchins. They are Scarlett Allitt, William Brown, Fintan Buckard, Primrose Cole, Tianna Coper-Adjei, Leo Fox-White, Keisha Ghai, Chris Johnson, Kian Lucas, Eva Magee, Angelie Pantilano, Lily-May Poulton, Georgina Salwey, Thomas Slater, Lottie Stone and Freya Youngman.
Oliver O’Shea directs. He was associate director on Derby Theatre’s previous Christmas productions Hansel and Gretel in 2018 and Peter Pan in 2017 alongside the theatre’s artistic director Sarah Brigham.
O’Shea directed The Merchant of Venice for Stafford Festival Shakespeare in 2019. He is also creative associate for Pilot Theatre and worked on its co-production of Sabrina Mahfouz’s adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses with Derby Theatre.
A Christmas Carol will run at Derby Theatre from Friday 29 November until Saturday 4 January 2020. Press night will be Tuesday 3 December.