Deb McAndrew: From Coronation Street to Mrs Christmas
We all know what Father Christmas looks like, right? Jolly chap, red suit, beard. His wife, however, is more of an enigma. Even though Santa's other half has been around in fiction for over a century, we don’t seem to have settled on a generally accepted image. Well, it turns out in Yorkshire for 2025, Mrs Christmas might well look like a Coronation Street character from the 1990s. Go with me.
Angie Freeman, erstwhile Rovers Return barmaid, former love of Curly Watts, was played by Deborah McAndrew who, it transpires, is the very personification of Christmas 2025 across both East and West Yorkshire.
McAndrew these days has left the Corrie Cobbles long behind and has spent the last two decades becoming an ever-increasingly prolific playwright, something which reaches a bit of a peak this festive season.
“It’s just happened, I don’t know, people just rang me up,” says McAndrew, when asked why and how she has taken over Christmas in Yorkshire. She is the writer behind not just one but two of the big Christmas shows at Yorkshire theatres this festive season. She’s providing the scripts for A Christmas Carol at Leeds Playhouse and for Oliver Twist at Hull Truck Theatre. To be the writer of one big Christmas show at a theatre is a seriously big responsibility, but to be responsible for providing the scripts for two Christmas shows in Yorkshire theatre, you have to wonder how McAndrew has ended up so high up on Santa’s Nice (to work with) List.
“It’s just a coincidence that two of my shows are on this Christmas,” says McAndrew. “I don’t think this will happen again.”
She’s being disingenuous, it’s not a coincidence: it’s the result of hard work and turning out successful adaptations of various stories for theatre companies over the past 20 years, many in Yorkshire. Having said that, the journey to East and West Yorkshire Christmas domination of 2025 actually begins across the border in Bolton a number of years ago.
“It all starts with Mark Babych, who commissioned me to adapt Oliver Twist when he was at Bolton Octagon many years ago. Then when he left, he ended up running Hull Truck so when he was there about six years ago, he commissioned me to write A Christmas Carol,” says McAndrew. “When that was produced, Amy Leach (who at the time was second-in-command at Leeds Playhouse) was brought in to direct the show. She also directed a stripped down version of the show for the screen during the pandemic and it is Amy who is bringing Christmas Carol back to Leeds Playhouse this year.”
It turns out the best career advice McAndrew can offer other playwrights is simple - turn it in on time and be nice to work with. Presumably that’s why the directors she’s worked with keep asking her to come back. So when did she know she was going to be coming back like turkey on Boxing Day, for Christmas 2025?
“Amy (Leach) contacted me about a year ago, actually, around about Christmas time last year, saying that the theatre was thinking about staging the show,” says McAndrew. “I was delighted; it’s always great to not have to write a new play. It’s always interesting to revisit something that you’ve already written, which I had to do because it was quite a different brief for this new production, it’s a much bigger production with a company of 14 and the story is now set in the mills and it’s about the rag trade, the wool trade of West Yorkshire.
“The other thing I’ve looked at is the character of Scrooge. I had a text from my lovely friend Reece Dinsdale when he was cast that said ‘I am your Scrooge’. Reece will be wonderful, it’s brilliant casting because he’s such a powerful actor, he has such a strong presence on stage. He’s not the scrawny, miserly Scrooge you find in the book, he brings a much more powerful interpretation to the role.” So that’s West Yorkshire and Leeds Playhouse and, arguably, the most obvious of festive theatre shows - Sheffield Crucible is also staging its own version of the Dickens story this year.
Less obvious, arguably, is Oliver Twist. A great story, but it doesn’t exactly scream Christmas. It turns out it does in the hands of McAndrew. “Well it was commissioned by Mark when he was at Bolton Octagon as a Christmas show, so that was always part of the brief,” she says. “So I have Oliver born at Christmas, he goes to the workhouse at Christmas. There’s a thing in the book that says he’s sent to a place called the Baby Farm until he’s nine, when the children are put to work. So the famous scene where he asks for ‘more’ - it’s actually his Christmas dinner that he’s asking for in my version.
“The story actually fits beautifully across a year, so when he is at the Sowerberry’s (the undertaker who ‘purchases’ Oliver) it’s January and it’s cold and dark. When he escapes to London, it’s Spring and when he gets to London and meets Fagin and the gang it’s summer and then at the height of summer he is taken in by the Brownlows. As he’s stolen away we’re in Autumn and we get the betrayal of Nancy and her murder by Bill Sikes - spoiler alert - on Bonfire Night, with treason and plotting an important part of the story.
“Finally, when we start thinking of Christmas and being in the bosom of our families, the question that hangs over the end of the story is ‘will Oliver make it home and back to his family in time for Christmas’.” She makes it sound so simple, like she’s worked out the secret. It turns out that, even though she is still well remembered from her stint in Coronation Street, remarkably so, given that it was three decades ago, the secret is that McAndrew is steeped in theatre.
“I’m a playhouse creature. People know me from Corrie, but during a 35-year-career I was in Corrie for less than four years, the rest of the time I’ve been in theatre. To think that I’ve made a life in the theatre is a huge joy for me,” says McAndrew.
As she raises the spectre of Coronation Street, it feels right to ask her about it. It does seem like her character had an impact somewhat disproportionate to the amount of screentime she had.
“I played Angie Freeman in a little bit of a love triangle with Raquel and Curly Watts. Angie was a bit of a foil and I think people remember the character because she was nice. She wasn’t horrible, didn’t murder anybody, I think she was just fun. I know the writers enjoyed writing for her and there really were some great writers on the show, because they could give her lines, little witty quips, that you couldn’t really give to the other characters.”
McAndrew describes herself as ‘fantastically much older now’ (she was on screen 1990 - 1993), but the fact that her voice hasn’t changed means people sometimes recognise her when she speaks. “I open my mouth and people go ‘oh I know you’, because you might look different, but your voice doesn’t really change,” she says.
Given how in demand she is, will she be able to see the two Yorkshire Christmas shows? “It’s worked out brilliantly because I can go to press night in Leeds and then the following night I can get to Hull for the first night,” says McAndrew.
And then time for this Mrs Christmas to have a well earned mince pie?
“Well no. Then I’ll be in Derby because Derby Theatre is also staging my Oliver Twist as their Christmas show.”
Of course it is. The only person working harder than Deborah McAndrew this Christmas, it seems, will be Santa himself. Although in Yorkshire which one is spreading the most Christmas cheer is a close run thing.
A Christmas Carol, Leeds Playhouse, to Jan 17. Oliver Twist, Hull Truck Theatre, to Jan 4.