The hugely popular re-imagining of Charles Dickens’ festive staple A Christmas Carol, starring Simon Callow and directed by Tom Cairns, will return to the Arts Theatre in London for a strictly limited season from 8 December to 7 January, with press night on Thursday 15 December.  Â
Based on Dickens’ own performance of the novel, Simon Callow and director-designer Tom Cairns have created a critically acclaimed, one-man storytelling that is both heart-warming and deeply moving. With sell-out seasons in 2011 and 2012, A Christmas Carol, with Simon Callow, has become a well-loved adaptation for the Christmas season.
As the ghosts spirit Scrooge from the present to his past and future, Dickens takes us on a magical journey from the miser’s dank and creaking house to cosy hearths, and from snowy graveyards to joyful festivities. This treasured story offers a celebration of goodness, a plea for justice and the promise of redemption.
One of the nation’s best loved stage and screen actors, Simon Callow steps back into Charles Dickens’ shoes following previous performances as the author in the stage productions The Mystery of Charles Dickens at the Playhouse Theatre, Dr Marigold & Mr Chops at Riverside Studios, the film Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairytale, on television in the BBC’s An Audience with Charles Dickens, and Doctor Who in 2005 and 2011. Callow has even written two books about the author, Dickens’ Christmas in 2003 and Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World in 2012.
 The enduring popularity of A Christmas Carol, both as a novel and on stage, is testament to a story that transcends centuries, and has never been out of print. Within two months of its original publication in 1843, eight stage productions were known to have been mounted, and Dickens himself chose the story to perform not only at his first public reading in 1853, but also at his farewell performance in 1869.
