What the Dickens

A spellbinding theatre piece with music by award-winning writer Clare Norburn and BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton, soundtracked by colourful Victorian popular songs and street music, old carols and lively folk dance 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, which has created the very quintessence of Christmas, starts to unravel as he is haunted by the women he mistreated 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?