This festive season, European Arts Company will be bringing the spirits of Christmas past, present and future back to Greenwich in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Performing the timeless Victorian ghost-story using the same performance script that Dickens himself would have read from in the 19th century, John O’Connor will be taking to the stage as Charles Dickens again in this highly acclaimed show’s sixth year at Greenwich Theatre.
The well-known festive classic will follow the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge as he is visited by a series of ghosts on the eve of Christmas, evaluating his past and influencing his future. This exciting production of A Christmas Carol, adapted from Dickens’s own public reading scripts and eyewitness accounts of him on stage, recreates the spirit of his original performances, just a stone’s throw from the Greenwich Literary Institution on Royal Hill where Dickens himself performed in 1866.
Dickens’s public readings of A Christmas Carol became hugely popular throughout Britain and America. He performed the story over 150 times and, remarkably, made more money from his readings than from all his novels put together.
Dickens originally wanted to be an actor and by all accounts had a magnetic stage presence, riveting eyes, expressive voice, dynamic energy and wonderful powers of characterisation. A Christmas Carol was the first public reading he ever did and also the last. After the very first performance, he said The success was most wonderful and prodigious – perfectly overwhelming and astounding altogether. The starting point for this production was what must it have been like to be in the audience hearing the story direct from Dickens the author and performer?
Actor John O’Connor comments, It’s wonderful to be returning to Greenwich where Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor and which was an important location in his life and work. Greenwich features in Sketches by Boz, The Uncommercial Traveller, David Copperfield and Bleak House. In Our Mutual Friend, there’s even a wedding in St Alfege’s Church (opposite the theatre) and a reception in The Trafalgar Tavern! Dickens’s own parents lived in Blackheath and he did one of his famous readings here in 1866. Greenwich Theatre is the perfect place to recreate Dickens’s magical performance of his best-loved Christmas Story.
