Ghosts of the past... and a new theatrical high flyer

His glittering CV of theatrical directing boasts (although he himself is not the boastful type) Hay Fever at Chichester, Kes in Liverpool, The Witches of Eastwick, Amadeus, a Chorus Line and Assassins in Sheffield, Animal Farm, Salonika and Bollywood Jane at West Yorkshire Playhouse, A Midsummer Night's Dream in Colchester, Pagliacci with Pegasus Opera, A Streetcar Named Desire with Clywd Theatre Cymru, Bourbon – the 24-Hour Plays 2006 at The Old Vic and Evita in an amphitheatre in Beirut.

He has returned to West Yorkshire Playhouse with A Christmas Carol, the Dickens story that helped to re-establish Christmas as a family celebration after the long-held puritanism dictated by Cromwell and his not-so-merry-men. Foster comes hot-footing from directing the stunning and zesty smash-hit Flashdance in the West End, choreographed by Arlene Phillips.

"People want to put you in a box. Maybe I'm a bit odd, but in this increasingly dumbed-down world where labels are everything, I resist and want to do a bit of everything," he says. "I don't think it means you are neither fish nor fowl. I pride myself on being able to work well with challenging work across a broad spectrum, and don't really look at any kind of story or medium as 'not for me', or something I can't work hard to put my stamp on".

He describes his production of the Dickens adaptation by Bryony Lavery as "...dark, edgy, very faithful to the book. There's nothing of the 'Quality Street' about it. It came out of the mind of 24 year-old Dickens who was an angry young man." First published in 1843, influences on the story of A Christmas Carol include certain humiliating experiences in the writer's childhood and his conflicting feelings about his father, his sympathy for the poor and downtrodden and admiration of the Christmas tales of Washington Irving.

In 1824, Dickens Snr was imprisoned in Marshalsea, and 12-year-old Charles was forced to take lodgings nearby, leave school, pawn his books and find employment in a factory, where he didn't fit in and was known as "the young gentleman".

When he father was released, Charles had to continue working and he despaired of ever regaining his former happy life. This dark period coloured his work, as did his mixed emotions towards his father, whom both eulogised and demonised in his writing, reflected vividly in the dual personality of Scrooge – cold, greedy, stingy and reclusive at first, but later benevolent, generous and sociable.

The factory informed Dickens on the lives of men, women and children in the most impoverished areas of London, and he later toured Cornish tin mines, seeing children working in terrible conditions.

Dickens realised the most effective way of airing his social concerns about poverty and injustice was to write a Christmas narrative rather than political essays and pamphlets. A Christmas Carol was immediately critically acclaimed and quickly adapted for the stage.

The book was an instant hit, written as it was in an era when Britain was rekindling its interest in pre-Cromwell traditional Christmas celebrations, led by Prince Albert's introduction of the Christmas tree to England in 1841 and the first Christmas card a couple of years later.

"He had suffered a bit himself and observed the suffering of others in London's worst neighbourhoods. He was railing against a society that was inward-looking, each man for himself, led by the greedy values of Victorian society.

"Yes, we have the happy family celebration at the end and the lovely songs, but to get there we have to travel with the greedy, miserly Scrooge, forced to confront who he is in order to move on to reconciliation and redemption.

"It is actually a serious play with songs and with stark and brutally poetic exploration of character. Scrooge's personality incorporates many of the tyrannical traits of Dickens's own father, and those traits are explored again and again among the 33,000 characters he is said to have created across all of his novels. We aim to take the audience through a dark and twisted journey to a tense and emotional high point – then allow the celebrations to begin. There are some mindblowing points along the way. The audience is presented with equal and opposing arguments for Scrooge being the way he is, with a Greek chorus commenting on the action. Bryony's script is finely balanced and so exciting to work with".

Foster was born in Copenhagen to a Finnish mother and British father. When he was very young, the family moved to North Yorkshire, where he went to comprehensive school. Taking part in school productions provided a refuge from being bullied.

"People doing drama were friendly and it was an escape. I was about 12, and quickly realised I had an absolute passion for it, but real theatre seemed too glamorous for a lower middle-class kid like me to think of as a prospect".

At 16, a weekly internship at West Yorkshire Playhouse simply cemented the enthusiasm and determination.

"I was accepted to train at The Drama Centre in London, and although I acted and learned the Stanislavsky technique and did act, I was obsessed with lighting, sound, sets and all the other paraphernalia."

After graduation he won a place on a Channel 4-funded directing scheme at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre under Michael Grandage.

"What can I say about Michael? He taught me so much about making theatre relevant, provocative and beautifully staged".

Foster says theatres have to keep making themselves relevant as times become tighter economically.

"But somehow we have to do it while keeping standards uncompromisingly high. That tightrope is going to be quite a challenge."

He considers himself to have been "massively fortunate", and worries that impending hikes in university tuition fees will mean a return to the days when British theatre was run almost exclusively by a public school and Oxbridge elite.

"I couldn't have done what I have if we'd had to pay top-up fees. I am where I am because of the Playhouse and the Crucible and the old grants system. But in future we could see only those who have wealthy parents willing to be their patrons rising to the top in theatre. It could be another generation before we recover from that".

The 31-year-old takes little for granted, even with a full diary for 2011 that includes Macbeth in Singapore and Sherlock Holmes in London. "Not a day goes by that I don't wake up and feel I love what I do but want to do it better."

Until January 15. Box office 0113 213 7700

Conjuring up the spirit of christmas past for a modern take on charles dickens's classic ghost story

As a child, Christmas in our house began when the bumper copy of the Radio Times arrived.

It was then we could see which day The Wizard of Oz was on, it was then we were allowed to open the first box of Neopolitan chocolates and it was then my mum would free the nutcracker wedged in the back of the kitchen drawer since the year before and bring out the brazils. No one except my dad ever ate them, but that wasn't the point. It just wasn't Christmas without them.

Truth is, things have changed. Thanks to DVDs and SkyPlus, the annual outing of Dorothy and friends is no longer such a televisual event, when Terry's sold its factory in York they stopped making Neopolitans, and the only nuts any under 40 buys are salted or roasted. However, those in need of an injection of traditional Christmas spirit should head at once to the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

The Leeds theatre takes its festive shows very seriously and this year it's taken Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, shaken it up and added a Tim Burton edge. The ghosts charged with making Ebenezer Scrooge realise the error of his ways look like they've stepped straight from the set of Beetlejuice and with Colin Richmond's stunning set and Guy Hoare's eerie lighting the audience are led into a world where good is rewarded, evil punished and where it always snows on Christmas Day.

Under the direction of Nikolai Foster, Philip Whitchurch makes a memorable Scrooge and with puppets replacing actors for Tiny Tim and Ebenezer's much younger self, the whole thing is prevented from slipping into sentimentality. The songs aren't the strongest in musical theatre, but when a production looks and feels as good as this it can get away with just a smattering of stand-out numbers.

Scrooge may secure a brighter future by the end, but it's in the summoning of the spirit of Christmases past that makes this a truly special show.