A new show What the Dickens? by award-winning playwright/singer Clare Norburn, her company The Telling and BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton (Mrs Gaskells’ Wives & Daughters, Lewis, Musketeers) exposes 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. The show comes to OSO Arts Centre, Barnes for a week run from Tuesday 26th November to Saturday 30th November 2024 before a UK tour.
What inspired you to delve into the more controversial aspects of Charles Dickens’ private life for What the Dickens?, and how do you think it reshapes the way audiences will view him?
I had read Claire Tomalin’s book “The Invisible Woman” about Dickens’ mistress, the actress Ellen (Nelly) Ternan, who was only 19 when she and Dickens first met.
I found that story so extraordinarily modern: the story of a man – a celebrity – and his private life which is so at odds with all that he purports to be. That story is so modern – so relevant to today. Dickens treats both his wife and mother of their 10 children, Catherine Dickens and Nelly, his young mistress appallingly. And this treatment of the women in his life is so at odds with his public image of the family man, the inventor of the modern Christmas, which is still the image of him which pervades today.
That, to me, makes it a very modern story, with many contemporary resonances: as I wrote the story in the summer of 2023, the news stories were full of celebrities, Huw Edwards, Russell Brand and Philip Schofield and how their private lives didn’t match up to what we the public expect from those we put on pedestals.
So, as What the Dickens? enables the two women in his life to have a voice, I think the public will view Dickens very much in the light of those modern news stories. That doesn’t lessen how brilliant he was as a writer and how he tried through his writing and his philanthropy to do good, but it reframes him as a flawed man but with a challenging childhood and background that perhaps explain why he became the troubled man he did.
Your work often blends music and theatre seamlessly. How does the live music element in What the Dickens? enhance the storytelling and emotional depth of Dickens’ journey, especially with Victorian songs and carols woven into the performance?
I love the magical things that happen when you bring together music and theatre – and that fires all my work as a playwright. Music, like smell, has that amazing capacity to transport one back into the immediacy of a memory. And A Christmas Carol – especially the “Christmas past” scenes – is all about how memory shapes our character and explains who we are. So music is part of the way Dickens is transported back into the memories of his past as a child – he remembers how he sang that song and that takes him back in time. I’ve had the privilege of working with Steve Edis, our wonderful composer and arranger on the music. We have an amazing cast who act, sing and most of whom play instruments and that gives us an extraordinary flexibility. We have used instruments that Dickens played himself – accordion and violin and songs we know he played and sang: a popular 17/18th century song called “Begone, Dull Care” which he sang as a child in family theatricals and Home, Sweet Home, which Dickens played on the accordion (and which is nicely ironic given his home life was anything but sweet at certain points!), as well as music cited in A Christmas Carol: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and popular dance tunes from a collection by John Playford, as well as popular songs of the time. Steve has arranged the music for our line up but also has composed two new pieces: a wonderful street scene number taking inspiration from composers down the ages using street cries from sellers of goods – and also The Warrens Blacking Jingle: Warrens Blacking is the shoe shine company that Dickens worked for as a child: – it was something he was deeply ashamed of and kept a secret from his family.
The premise of What the Dickens? is unique in its reimagining of A Christmas Carol, with Dickens himself taking on the role of Scrooge. What do you hope audiences will take away from seeing Dickens forced to confront his own ‘ghosts’—his estranged wife and young mistress?
I loved writing the scenes where I quote directly from the show – for instance when Catherine Dickens is finally able to show Dickens what his treatment of her has done to her, she uses a direct series of quotes from a Christmas Carol – and it makes her so powerful. And Dickens sees how powerful she is and wishes she could have been like that in their marriage. For me, that is one of the most moving moments in the show and I hope that I give both Catherine and Nelly their voices – and their power back. What I love about placing Dickens as Scrooge is that Dickens is as powerless – and frightened and out of his depth – as Scrooge is. It is the women in the role of the “spirits” have the power. Like the book, the play is surreal, giving the women the ability to freeze Dickens when they want and transport him back in time and to different places. And the audience get to see a man of power suddenly become powerless.
And Christmas Carol is, of course, ultimately about transformation and redemption. But my Dickens fights transformation even more strongly than Scrooge. You will have to come and see the show to find out what happens in the end and if he is changed by his past, present and future being played out in front of him!
You’ve mentioned Dickens’ illness and exhaustion during his final years. How did you incorporate his physical and emotional state into the play, and what challenges did that present for the performers?
That’s a really interesting question. When I first wrote and tried out the show last year, although Dickens’ illness and exhaustion are referred to in the script, we didn’t really play that out too much and that is something we are looking to slightly reframe as we go into rehearsals this year. Certainly, the whole concept of the play plays upon the strange hijacking of a reading by Dickens of A Christmas Carol, which he did more and more of in his later years. He was a frustrated actor (he seriously considered becoming an actor as a young man) and those reading were, by all accounts, extraordinary, with Dickens putting a huge amount of energy into them – sometimes to the extent that he would collapse in the wings afterwards. So the play takes that febrile, unwell state of his and he has a kind of breakdown on stage. Certainly, the reading gets hijacked: musicians turn up: they shouldn’t be there. Then Dickens sees Catherine and no one else can see her – and he is not in control – which is frightening for a man who is a control freak. The challenge to the performers is how you play that – and the interesting thing is that the writer doesn’t provide all the answers: the director and actors are part of that answer.
This will be your first show at OSO Arts Centre in Barnes, and you have a strong local connection to the area. What makes this venue special for you, and how does it feel to bring this new production to a theatre so close to home?
Yes – very excited to be performing a week’s run at OSO (26-30 November)– it’s also our first ever week’s run. We usually just tour: travelling, rehearsing and doing the show, getting out, sleeping – and then repeat. So to be in one place for 5 performances will be a treat (alongside a tour around the country too)! Yes, I live in Twickenham, not far from Barnes and we have a strong SW London following. I love the programme at OSO and often go there: the team are so welcoming and the space is hugely adaptable. We are already lined up to bring two other shows there in 2025: Creating Carmen (30 Jan to 2 Feb) and Into the Melting Pot (early May). We can’t wait to get started.
It’s all a big mistake. Charles Dickens wasn’t the original author of “A Christmas Carol,” and in fact, if you look into the matter carefully, he couldn’t possibly have written it. What he did, was to commercialize and secularize a spiritualist redemption novella, co-authored by Americans Mathew Franklin Whittier and Abby Poyen Whittier. Dickens, himself, was a plagiarist and a man of very questionable personal character, as he is increasingly being revealed.