A Christmas Carol this isn’t: The Telling’s What the Dickens!

For their latest show, playwright/singer Clare Norburn and her company The Telling have turned to the private life of Charles Dickens. With an estranged wife and teenage mistress, he doesn’t quite live up to the image of the family man he would like to present to the world. Norburn’s What the Dickens! imagines Charles Dickens’ reading of A Christmas Carol isn’t going to plan. He finds himself re-cast as Scrooge, with his past, present and future being played out, as presented by two women he mistreated – his wife Catherine and his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan, who was only 19 when Dickens first approached her at the age of 45.

Directed by Nicholas Renton the show stars Clive Hayward as Dickens, Karen Ascoe as Catherine Dickens and actor-cellist Rosalind Ford as Ellen ‘Nelly’ Ternan, plus actor/musicians Alexander Knox, and Rosa Lennox, with soprano Clare Norburn and composer/pianist Steven Edis. The drama is accompanied by live music; all seven performers act, play instruments and sing, sometimes all at the same time. They perform colourful Victorian popular songs and street music, old carols and lively folk dances, arranged by music theatre composer Steven Edis.

Clare Norburn explains the unusual premise of the show: “’In What the Dickens?’,  I’ve reimagined Charles Dickens’ classic ‘A Christmas Carol’, taking inspiration from the secrets of Dickens’ life: his secret mistress, his terrible treatment of his wife and his early life as a boy working in a factory which made shoe blacking, of which he was deeply ashamed. I have also drawn on how unwell and febrile he was in his final years: he put so much energy into his theatrical readings that he would often collapse afterwards in the wings. So, I have used all those elements to overlay the familiar story we all know of ‘A Christmas Carol’, with Dickens himself being forced to re-evaluate his life and the impact of his actions.”  

The show is touring the UK from Friday 22nd November to Sunday 8th December, stopping at Wolverhampton, Lewes, Cardiff, Folkestone, Manchester, Silsden and OSO Arts Centre, Barnes for a week run from 26 to 30 November. Full details from The Telling’s website.