What The Dickens?

The Telling presents What the Dickens?

A new show where music and theatre collide by award-winning writer Clare Norburn and BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton with colourful Victorian popular songs & street music, old carols and lively folk music performed by a multi-talented cast of seven who act, sing, dance and play instruments – sometimes all at the same time!

It’s Charles Dickens’ last Christmas Eve: 1869. Against his doctor’s wishes, he 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 his character Scrooge. Dickens’ carefully managed image as a family man, who has 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 Dickens, and his secret young mistress, Ellen ‘Nelly’ Ternan), who 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?

“mesmerising”  – The Guardian on The Telling

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