What the Dickens?

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 is coming to Silsden Town Hall on Sunday 8th December as part of a UK tour.

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.

The show stars Clive Hayward as Charles Dickens (who aptly played Fezziwig in two productions of RSC’s A Christmas Carol), Karen Ascoe as Catherine Dickens (who has appeared in Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Doctors and Holby City as well as on stage including Guildford Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet) and actor-cellist Rosalind Ford as Ellen ‘Nelly’ Ternan (The Cabinet Minister (Menier Chocolate Factory), In Clay (OFFIE 2025 nominated - Best Lead Performance in a Musical, Upstairs at the Gatehouse), Miss Littlewood and Boundless as the Sea (RSC/Cunard)). Plus, the brilliant actor-musicians Alexander Knox (multiple roles, violin, voice) and Rosa Lennox (multiple roles, accordion, voice), the show’s award-winning writer/soprano Clare Norburn and composer/pianist Steven Edis (who composed music for National Theatre under the artistic directorship of Trevor Nunn).

The playwright, Clare Norburn, won the Colin Skipp Memorial Cup at the Arts Richmond Radio Playwriting Competition last year for her radio play ‘The End. Roll Credits’, about TV playwright Dennis Potter’s famous TV interview with Melvyn Bragg. Since 2010, Norburn has been developing a new genre of ‘concertplays’ which seamlessly combine music and theatre.

The play is set on Dickens’ final Christmas Eve, 1869. Against his doctor’s orders, Dickens gives one of his acclaimed theatrical readings of ‘A Christmas Carol’. But from the moment the lights go down, his life becomes strangely entangled with that of his character Scrooge.

Clare goes on to explain 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.”
Dickens’ carefully managed image as a family man, who created the very quintessence of Christmas, starts to unravel. He is haunted by the women he mistreated: his wife and mother of his ten children, Catherine, and his young mistress, actress Ellen (Nelly) Ternan who was only 19 when Dickens first approached her at the age of 45. They strip aside the jovial public family image Dickens has tried to maintain and force him to face up to his past, present and future. Can Dickens learn from the ghosts, repent and be saved - as Scrooge was saved?

The collision of music and theatre is Clare Norburn and her company The Telling’s hallmark. The drama is soundtracked 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 acclaimed music theatre composer Steven Edis (known for his time at The National Theatre with Trevor Nunn in the 1990s). Steven has also written new music including a fun jingle for Warren’s Blacking, where Dickens worked as a boy.

“mesmerising... An austerely beautiful piece about a woman whose faith gave her extraordinary strength and courage."
Tim Ashley, The Guardian on another show: ‘Vision’ by The Telling

Clare Norburn adds, “all writers pour a little of themselves into their characters and there is certainly a bit of Scrooge in Dickens - or Dickens in Scrooge. For example, Scrooge as a boy loves Ali Baba of the Arabian Nights. Dickens took refuge from his miserable childhood in reading and The Arabian Nights was a particular favourite.”

What the Dickens? aims to empower and give a voice to the women in Dickens' life who were denied an opportunity to give their side of the story at the time. The show may be set in the Victorian past, but like all of Clare Norburn’s work, it speaks for today, for women, and in this show, for victims of celebrities. It is also great fun!
“The story of Charles Dickens is the story of a man who has a public image - and a private life which is at odds with that public image - which is very relevant to today,” Norburn continues. “Sadly, there are many contemporary resonances: the context of #MeToo and recent news stories of celebrities such as Huw Edwards and Philip Schofield. Dickens would never have got away with keeping a mistress and treating his wife so appallingly today.”

“an exploration of the boundaries between art and life...intelligent… finds new terrain”
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian on Clare Norburn’s writing

The Telling will take What the Dickens? across England and Wales on a 6-date tour alongside a week run at OSO Arts Centre in Barnes, SW London. Full details are on The Telling’s website: https://www.thetelling.co.uk/diary

Tickets for the Silsden performance cost £20-£28 and are available to book online now at https://www.silsden.live/event-details/what-the-dickens