What the Dickens? WTF was my jaw-dropping reaction to this devastating deconstruction of our, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, national treasure Charles Dickens. The myth of Dickens is embedded into our national psyche – poor boy made good, world-famous writer, champion of the poor and marginalised, generous philanthropist – so it is difficult for us to accept that he had a dark side which should be recognised, acknowledged and appreciated. This play invites us to consider the hard question: is art worth the price paid for its creation? Especially when the price is measured in lives destroyed so that the artist can be an artist. It is these hard and difficult questions that Clare Norburn’s new play What the Dickens? confronts us with. The result is a spell-binding experience that will change forever how you see both Dickens and the Christmas traditions he did so much to create. What the Dickens? Is the perfect companion piece to take in before your annual pilgrimage to A Christmas Carol.
The play is cleverly framed by two Dickens traditions. His public readings and A Christmas Carol. Clive Hayward, as a very Pickwickian-like Charles Dickens, is standing at a lectern giving a reading from A Christmas Carol in 1869. This would turn out to be Dickens’ last as he died in 1870 aged 58. As he reads the part of Scrooge he is interrupted by a band of musicians / singers. They hijack the reading and accuse Dickens of being Scrooge and warning him moreover that the three spirits of past, present and future are for him Charles Dickens, not his fictional creation Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s a brilliant inversion that both structures the play and hoists Dickens, as it were, with his own petard. Clive Hayward does a wonderful job of smiling through gritted teeth, as it were. Like a modern-day spin doctor, he always finds a way to present himself in the best possible light. But this production knows exactly where his skeletons are hiding and opens the cupboard for us to see them.
The first charge on the charge sheet is his treatment of his wife Catherine Dickens nee Hogarth. Karen Ascoe’s entrance as the spirit of Catherine dressed head to toe in black is chilling. Karen Ascoe is tremendous. She embodies forcefully and convincingly Catherine’s desperately sad situation. The power imbalance is so against her that she has very little room for manoeuvre. After giving birth to eleven children, and in the process ruining her body, she finds herself abandoned and neglected. Dickens had her bricked up in a separate part of the family home before eventually evicting her and keeping the children. The most chilling moment of all is when Dickens wishes she would hurry up and die so that he could be open with his young lover Nelly Ternan (Rosalind Ford).
Nelly Turnan is the second woman Dickens uses and abuses. A teenage actress when she met him, he took advantage of her financial insecurity to set her up in a house in London as his mistress. Rosalind Ford is adept at showing Nelly’s conflicted situation. To his face she is obsequious and flattering, as she knows she has to be because she needs his money, but to us the audience she can be open and honest. She plays the split exceptionally well. The play is Brechtian in the way Rosalind confesses to the audience that she has no chance with Charles because he is in fact in love with us, the audience. Like all entertainers, he is addicted to fame. We see what it means to be a kept woman. Waiting for him to call. Never being seen together in public, to do so would be to outrage Victorian public opinion. Dickens wants his cake and to eat it. To the public, he’s a married man but in private he’s a rich man with a young mistress. Finally, it dawns on Nelly the realisation that must befall all mistresses: what happens to me when he’s dead or abandons me? The wonderful achievement of this show is that it gives both Catherine and Nelly the opportunity to put their point of view front and centre. Doing so is both instructive and enlightening.
His treatment of his surviving ten children is the third charge against the defendant. This takes up less time than the other charges and can be summed up briefly. In a nutshell, he was a very bad father too busy with his own career to bother with them. He sent them off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity and then to India and Australia. None of them ever lived up to his expectations and so he grew to loathe them. He even wrote a letter to a friend saying that he wished one of his sons dead. This is superbly caught in a scene between himself and his eldest son Charlie (Alexander Knox) in which he explodes with rage when Charlie asks for a loan of £10.
The scenes are short and concise interspersed with song and dance routines from the multi-talented actors, singers, and musicians in the cast of seven. The song about Charles’s time in the boot blacking factory when a child ‘Warren’s Blacking” is a good example of a song that both entertains and drives the narrative forward. Nelly’s song does likewise and so too does Catherine’s big number. However, some of the songs don’t manage to do that and so could be dropped in my opinion. The mixture of comedy – the scene with Catherine circulating eleven babies is very funny – serious drama and musical interludes make for a very refreshing and enjoyable night in the theatre. Clare Norburn has an original take on Dickens which is thought-provoking and indubitable. As we peak Dickens season, take the chance to see the familiar in an unfamiliar light.
Review by John O’Brien
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?
CAST
Charles Dickens – Clive Hayward
Catherine Dickens / Voice – Karen Ascoe
Ellen ‘Nelly’ Ternan / Cello – Rosalind Ford
Young Dickens / Violin / Voice – Alexander Knox
Young Catherine / Bob Fagin / Accordion / Voice – Rosa Lennox
Voice – Clare Norburn
Keyboard – Steven Edis
CREATIVE
Writer / Producer – Clare Norburn
Director – Nicholas Renton
Composer / Arranger – Steven Edis
General Manager – Stephanie Pillinger
WHAT THE DICKENS?
26 to 30 November 2024
OSO Arts Centre, 49 Station Road, Barnes, London SW13 0LF
