Wilton’s Music Hall today announces that Debbie Chazen will star in its Christmas production The Child In The Snow, a thrilling, eerie and ultimately uplifting new adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Victorian ghost story ‘The Old Nurse’s Tale’ brimming with festive magic and mystery, created by award-winning author Piers Torday.
The spine-chilling festive production will see actor of stage and screen Debbie Chazen take on the role of Estelle Leanord; known for both her appearances in some of the UK’s favourite TV shows such as Holby City, The Smoking Room and Doctors and her West End and nationwide theatre performances including in The Girls at the Phoenix Theatre, for which she received an Olivier Award nomination.
Wilton’s rather ghostly version of this tale will be set in 1918 when a young nurse, back from the front line, engages in a séance recalling strange memories of a lonely childhood Christmas on the Northumbrian moors. It will unearth a dark secret that refuses to remain in the past. A classic festive ghost story – not suitable for those of nervous disposition.
The Child In The Snow has been created by the same creative team who have sustained Wilton’s’ tradition of producing exceptional, original Christmas stories and bringing festive magic to the East London stage; in 2017 and 2018 the critically acclaimed The Box of Delights delighted audiences, followed by a wonderful adaptation of A Christmas Carol featuring a female Scrooge that was named as A Sunday Times Best Selling Show of 2019.
Award-winning children’s author Piers Torday (winner of The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and Children’s Book of the Year in The Times) has again turned his hand to adapting a classic, this time drawn to the incredible era of female Victorian writers of ghost stories and in particular Elizabeth Gaskell. Probably best known for her novels Cranford, Wives and Daughters and North and South, all of which have been screened by the BBC.
Torday reunites with director Justin Audibert, alongside designer Tom Piper, and composer, Ed Lewis. Joining this stellar team are lighting designer Jess Bernberg, video designer Hayley Egan and magicians Morgan and West, no strangers to Wilton’s, will be magic consultants.
Writer Piers Torday says ‘The Victorian age gave rise to the classic ghost story, yet shamefully few of the many great supernatural tales by women authors of the period have been anthologised, never mind adapted. I’m delighted to be correcting that in some way by bringing this ferociously and typically brilliant story by Elizabeth Gaskell to the stage. “The Old Nurse’s Tale” is a stone cold classic of the genre: a deserted country house on the snowbound Northumbrian moors, a horrific family secret, and a girl who won’t stop asking questions. What is not to love? The idea of telling a ghost story at the magically atmospheric Wilton’s Music Hall over Christmas was irresistible, especially when I knew that Justin Audibert and the creative team behind The Box of Delights would be bringing it all to spooky life…’
