SPIRITED AWAY
ALL OF MARK GATISS’S Christmases have come at once. “It’s a three-pronged attack from me this year,” he beams, as he prepares to unleash a spooky trinity of new projects. “I feel like Santa must do when he’s making his toys in the middle of July. It’s been Christmas for me all year round!”
And a deeply Gatiss brand of Christmas too. The Christmas of pale midwinter light and dark, fast-encroaching evenings. An ideal season for fireside tales of hauntings. Pull up a chair, ignore the bony, grave-cold hand rummaging in the Quality Street…
It’s a bright, apparition-free morning as SFX catches up with Gatiss over Zoom – so bright that he needs to shift position, adjusting the angle on his iPhone. “I can’t sleep in this flat,” he frets. “I need black-out curtains. Blinds are hopeless. I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s like daylight. I have to wear an eyemask, like Joan Collins!”
He needs his kip. Tonight’s the press night for A Christmas Carol, a new stage version of Charles Dickens’s phantasmic morality tale. It’s been adapted by Gatiss, who also plays chain-bound wraith Jacob Marley. Arriving at London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre for a Christmas run, it’s a take that relishes the scarier side of Dickens.
“It’s a joyous production
