Martha Howe-Douglas shares 'nerve-wracking' experience bringing A Christmas Carol to West End

There's nothing as Christmassy as A Christmas Carol, which is why Martha Howe-Douglas and Nick Mohammed are delighted to be bringing the Charles Dickens classic to the West End with a twist, they share with Yahoo UK.

For Howe-Douglas the experience is one that she is very much enjoying, especially as a fan of Christmas, but she has also found it quite "nerve-wracking" in the process: "I'm absolutely loving it, and we're so lucky. The team are incredible, everybody's so brilliant, everyone's at the top of their game, so it's a a huge privilege to be part of. And then there's the West End thing thrown in, which is just pressure.

"So it's super exciting, a little bit nerve-wracking — actually a lot nerve-wracking — but I think it's gonna be great, and I think people are gonna really love it. It's just a festive hoot, it's just stupid, silly fun really."

A Christmas Carol (ish) opens in London's Soho Place theatre, and finds Mohammed's stage persona Mr Swallow present his own version of the iconic story where Santa — not Scrooge — is visited by three ghosts after deciding to cancel Christmas. But, as Mohammed puts it, it doesn't take long for everything to go wrong as a result of who's in charge.

"Because it's a Mr. Swallow show it's derailed by the fact that he's also genuinely quite selfish," Mohammed says of the play within a play. "He hasn't really learned his lines and is chasing the show as it carries on around him."

The play sees Howe-Douglas and Mohammed be joined by Kieran Hodgson and David Elms, both of whom have worked with Mohammed on multiple occasions since 2014. The pair starred in the 2022 version of the play, and also worked with Mohammed on Mr Swallow's take on Dracula in 2014 and Houdini in 2016, making A Christmas Carol (ish) feel like it "completes the trilogy".

With rehearsals well underway ahead of the show's debut on Saturday, 16 November, Howe-Douglas admits that the production has proven a big challenge: "It's been a lot for me because originally when they did the play in 2022 it was Sarah Hadland who played the part I'm playing and because she's in Strictly now I've come in.

"So I'm kind of late to the party, which has been quite full on, I'll be honest. I mean, I'm absolutely loving it. I never saw myself doing musical theatre but it's been a lot. It's been a lot to learn, lots of songs and harmonies — I've never done harmony singing ever in my life."

Mohammed was quick to praise his co-star following her remarks, sharing: "Martha has done phenomenal, bear in mind we did a lot of this show before — or a good portion of it — Martha's better than us, like we could not be more thrilled that Martha agreed to do it. She also has been doing phenomenally."

The Ghosts star jokes that while she has sung before for projects like her hit series Horrible Histories, it is very different to treading the boards: "That was a long time ago, but I have to say that doing the music videos that we used to do were one of my favourite parts of doing Horrible Histories, I just love those.

Read more:

The festive movies to watch for Christmas 2024

Horrible Histories: What did the cast do next?

How to find every Christmas movie on Netflix using secret codes

"But I think doing it live is a very different thing, with Horrible Histories we used to record it in the studio so then you will just be lip syncing on set which is a lot safer than doing this. But we've got great people who're teaching us and training us, and giving advice. So hopefully we'll be ready to go!"

The play is "an alternative to a Christmas panto", according to Mohammed who says: "But it has some of the hallmarks of it being a family treat and very silly. When we first put this on there were about 11 different versions of A Christmas Carol, none of them were comedies though they were all really straight and traditional."

Balancing work during the festive season

Mohammed, Howe-Douglas, and their co-stars will be starring in the production all the way through the festive season — with the exception of Christmas Day and Boxing Day — until New Year's Eve. It means that the weeks leading up to Christmas will be quite busy for all involved, which is good but Mohammed admits does have its drawbacks.

"It's a double-edged sword because it does mean it's tough on the family because we won't see them as much, but hopefully it's like one Christmas and then we'll have many Christmases together, you know?" he explains. "But it's a commitment and, to be fair, to do a show in the West End is, well, a dream come true quite frankly and we're lucky in that it's a 6-7 week run.

"Usually if you do a West End show it's minimum three months, isn't it? So actually we are, relatively speaking, in and out, but obviously it falls over Christmas. And at least friends and family can come to it well, so we can celebrate together."

Howe-Douglas shares that she thinks "the memory of this is going to be one of my favourites" because of how "uplifting" and fun the production is. And the benefit is that they will be joined by their family and friends during the run too.

Having done the play before, Mohammed's family already saw it the first time around but they are keen to come again — especially because there's more to the story: "To be honest, I think this show is 60% longer, so much has changed, it's 40 minutes longer and there's more music, more movements, bigger steps. I think they're coming to a matinee in early December, late November, I get more nervous when they see it than press night!"

For the Horrible Histories actor her mother is attending the play eight times: "She's coming about eight times so far, on the first preview night, and so on, and so on. She loves it, she'll know the songs. My husband already knows the songs because I have to sing it around the house, he loves it."

"My kids have been singing the songs a lot," Mohammed adds. "They're coming to a matinee, they'll probably come to see it more than once."

The pair both have a fondness for Christmas, naming films like Home Alone and A Muppet Christmas Carol as their favourite festive movies to watch together. While they are going to be busy with their West End show they're both still keen to make the most of their family time too.

Howe-Douglas shares: "I love Christmas, I love it all. I'm actually hosting this year, my mum has always hosted for lots of people —I have a big family— and now we're doing it. My husband's family is Italian, so we're gonna go to town. I'm gonna make the house look like a grotto, and it's all gonna be great. I mean, I'll be exhausted doing this, but it's gonna be great!"

What Mohammed hopes is that the production will be the perfect way for families to enjoy the holidays together: "I just want people to just appreciate and enjoy it because we're having a great time and I hope that translates and people just have a grand old time."

Tickets are on sale now for A Christmas Carol (ish), which will be playing at the Soho Place theatre from Saturday, 16 November to Tuesday 31 December.