Stage and screen actor Reece Dinsdale talks about his 35-year relationship with the Playhouse – and the joy of playing Scrooge in his first ever festive show

There’s something very special about being home for Christmas. For renowned actor Reece Dinsdale, the ‘home’ in question is Leeds Playhouse, with which he’s enjoyed a highly successful working relationship since it opened on Quarry Hill in 1990. 

The then Artistic Director Jude Kelly wanted a Yorkshire actor for the leading role in the first play – John O’Keeffe’s Wild Oats – to be staged in the new Quarry Theatre after the organisation’s pivotal move from the University campus. And the actor she wanted was Reece. Born in Normanton, he had already made his mark on screen in the seminal nuclear drama Threads and popular sitcom Home to Roost opposite John Thaw, and on stage in plays at the RSC, Royal Court and Royal Exchange. 

“I remember saying to my dad ‘there’s a new theatre opening in Leeds and they want me to play this lovely leading role – what do you think?’,” said Reece, as he took a break from rehearsing A Christmas Carol. “He said ‘get it done, son – it’ll be like opening the batting for Yorkshire’. 

“He was right, you know. I remember the very first night was for all the builders – all the guys and girls I’d seen around the place in hard hats while we were rehearsing – and their partners. It was a packed house and they loved it. Many of them had never seen a play before, and their reaction was absolute joy. They suddenly understood what they had been building towards for the last two or three years. And I knew I’d found a place to call home as an actor.” 

Reece returned in 1991 as Christy Mahon in John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and, in 1992, as Vindice in the Jacobean classic The Revenger’s Tragedy. In 2000, he was back in Visiting Mr Green, a two-hander in the Courtyard Theatre with Warren Mitchell, and, under the Artistic Directorship of James Brining, Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories, Shakespeare’s Richard III, and (The Fall of) The Master Builder, which reworked the Henrik Ibsen classic. 

Reece subsequently became the Playhouse’s first Associate Artist and returned to the stage in the summer of 2025 to wow audiences in Through It All Together, a new play by local writer Chris O’Connor commissioned by the Playhouse for the Courtyard. Amy Leach, director of A Christmas Carol and, at the time, Deputy Artistic Director of Leeds Playhouse, witnessed the nightly standing ovations the play received and was struck by the empathy and joy Reece brought to the role of Howard, a family man and lifelong Leeds United fan living with a dementia diagnosis. 

“Amy and I have always got on like a house on fire, but I never thought I’d have the opportunity to work with her,” said Reece. “When she said she wanted me to be her Scrooge, it was an immediate, enormous ‘yes’. I’d never done a play with songs before, but I said, ‘you know, I think I’m ready to have a go at a musical’. And she said, ‘Scrooge doesn’t sing, Reece!’. 

The Scrooge they have created is a money-driven industrialist running a late Victorian West Yorkshire woollen mill. He’s a selfish rogue without a care for anyone – until he is given a whistlestop tour of his past, present and future by spirits tasked with opening his eyes to the joyous potential of the world, and his transformative role within it.   

“You have to believe that he has a lingering sense of good hidden somewhere; that the schoolboy and apprentice at Fezziwig’s who so adored his sister is still in there,” said Reece. “Our golden rule from day one of rehearsals has been to always find the truth. We’ve found a lot of fun and joy in Scrooge – even in his devilish ‘scroogery’ at the beginning. We can laugh at Scrooge and have fun as we witness his journey. It’s not Great Expectations and he’s not Magwitch, so we can alleviate the darkness with moments of pure joy and entertainment.” 

Reece lives in Yorkshire, so he has the benefit of being able to spend time at home with his family during the run of A Christmas Carol. He’s working on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day but will be cooking the festive lunch on the 25th – something he has done every year since he was at drama school.   

“I do everything – even the washing up,” he said. “Although this year someone else might have to do the shopping and peel a few of the spuds.” 

In the weeks that run up to the big day, and those that follow, he’ll be bringing joy to packed houses in the Quarry. 

“Playing Scrooge at Christmas feels like a really wonderful way of celebrating my 35-year relationship with the Playhouse,” he said. “This feels like my home, and I could not be prouder to be here.”