Brian Conley's affable howl of misery at our grisly Christmas Present

After taking his bows, Brian Conley stepped out of character as Scrooge following the usual, heartening/demanding trajectory of grumping, snarling, softening and smiling – plus, this being the big, 1994, very American stage-musical version of A Christmas Carol, singing and dancing to boot. “This is the weirdest, weirdest opening night I’ve ever had!” he declared. Post-show speeches can be long (this was) and ripe with high sentimentality – this was too; but, for once, the rambling emotion was justified.

The 59-year-old actor has played to thousands in his time, in leading musical roles: Me and My Girl, Chitty, Oliver!, Barnum. But December 14 2020 will go down in the annals for him, as it will for others. His articulation of what he, all those on stage, and those behind the scenes had gone through on Monday – when it was abruptly announced London was entering Tier 3, forcing all the capital’s theatres to close midweek – was the most stirring aspect of the evening.

That’s not to denigrate the production – directed by Shaun Kerrison – which, schmaltzier flourishes aside, amply and stylishly gives you the life-affirming gist of Dickens’s ghostly tale. But the speech laid out in remarkably affable terms what it felt like to bear the brunt of that devastating blow.

After the grimmest year, here was a project that could harness Conley and co’s under-utilised talents. “He gave me a lifeline,” he said of Kerrison – “He said: ‘Here’s a script.’ I had something to learn, I could be artistic.” Frippery, an indulgence? No, a creative urge, innate in him – and us too.

The aim was nothing grander than taking us out of ourselves for a few hours. “All they [the producers] wanted to do was bring some joy to Christmas.” Sure, I duly noted the Christmas Carol merchandise in the Dominion foyer (fancied the Bah Humbug bobble-hat, tbh); but only the Scroogiest cynic, surveying the paltry, distanced audience, could detect a grasping profit-motive.

Conley’s address brought home the fact that not even in Dickens’s day was there a such a bleak Christmas for London theatre; you have to go back centuries further to find nothing doing. Regardless of the smog, fire-hazards and mortality rates of the Victorian age, the show went on. Medicine may have helped us, but across London – and beyond – are there not modern-day equivalents of the scraping-by Bob Cratchit and family, those who cling to Christmas merriment like a life-raft?

“This is the first time I’ve been to the theatre all year,” I overheard one woman say, simply, as we filed out. So much audience emotion was reined in during the performance – in answer I think to the consummate professionalism of the cast; the applause itself – endless, expressed the weight of feeling. But that chance remark moved me to tears. Could the bumbling powers that be really not have allowed theatre to get to the finishing line?

Christmases Future should look back and salute our grisly Christmas Present. Had you not known the news, you’d never have known anything was amiss while the show cantered on. With only two weeks of rehearsal, everyone pulled together, from the face-masked on-stage orchestra (conductor Freddie Tapner) to the warbling nippers, who’d braved the Covid-tests to play their part.

Alan Menken’s score (lyrics by Lynn Ahrens) often has the feel of photocopied Lionel Bart. Nothing Scrooge sings can match (the oddly comparable) Fagin. But Conley more than proved his mettle as the old miser, deploying curt politeness like a weapon and speaking for everyone with that immortal line: “The only thing I wish for this Christmas is for this year to be over.” Amen to that.