“Feel free to laugh, cry, gasp and wonder, in the spirit of Christmas past, present and future.” John O’Connor of the European Arts Company talks Mr Charles Dickens presents A Christmas Carol, touring from The Stamford Arts Centre to Brighton Royal Pavillion from Dec 1st till the 23rd.
For over 20 years, the European Arts Company has been producing, and touring theatre across the UK and Europe. For Christmas 2022, they are reviving their well-recieved A Christmas Carol, a one man recreation of author Charles Dickens’ first public performance of the work in 1853. Taking centre stage is company director, actor John O’Connor, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions from The QR…
Tell me a little about your show, and what adventures led you to be part of it!
It’s a one-man show based on Dickens’s own public performances of the story in the 1850s and 60s. He toured all over Britain and America performing to two or three thousand people a night and was an absolute sensation. He’d nearly become a professional actor at the age of 20 and never stopped hankering after the footlights. By all accounts, he was an astonishing performer. Far from ‘reading’ the stories, he learned them, rehearsed them meticulously and turned them into an acting tour de force. So successful was he, that he made more money from his public readings than from all his books and novels put together!
My starting point for this show was ‘what must it have been like to be in the audience?’ To have been in the presence of the author himself. We have tried our best to recreate Dickens’s style of dress, the set he toured, the gestures he favoured and even the script that he used. However, there is one point at which I have drawn the line – preparation. Dickens prepared for a performance by having two tablespoons of rum mixed with cream for breakfast, a pint of champagne for tea and (half an hour before he went on stage) a glass of sherry with a raw egg beaten into it!
Who is the show for?
This is a show for people of all ages and a great alternative to panto. There have been countless versions of the story from It’s a Wonderful Life to The Muppets but the first and greatest performance was by Dickens himself. At its best, the show is like an intimate conversation with the audience. People love A Christmas Carol so much and know it so well that you have to deliver it with total commitment and real passion. Only then do you get the response back (laughter, tears, horror, compassion) that let you ride the wave of the audience’s energy.
Dickens used to say to his audience before a reading:
‘If you feel disposed to give expression to any emotion whether grave or gay, please do so with perfect freedom from restraint and without the least apprehension of disturbing me’.
In other words, there’s no need to be as reserved as a Victorian! Feel free to laugh, cry, gasp and wonder, in the spirit of Christmas past, present and future.
Do you have a favourite moment in the show?
It’s always good fun (and a technical challenge) to recreate Fezziwig’s Ball – to paint a picture of a raucous party with a room full of people, eating, drinking, flirting and dancing with just me on stage! It’s the same with the Cratchit family’s Christmas dinner, I have to create the atmosphere of this large, loving, family get-together (with some ghostly observers in the room) and make sure the audience is rooting for them by the end.
Do you have a Christmas/New Year wish?
An end to ‘Scroogenomics’. We have had twelve years of austerity and now families are expected to endure even more after this government’s recent failed attempt to rob the poor to give to the rich. This Christmas will be especially harsh for many people who can no longer afford to heat their homes or pay their mortgages. With rising food prices, many Christmas tables will be emptier than in previous years and food banks (which, let’s not forget, didn’t exist 15 years ago) have never been so busy. A Christmas Carol was written in 1843 but is sadly as relevant now as it was 179 years ago. Dickens would be appalled at how little progress has been made.
What do you hope the audience are thinking about, or talking about when they leave the venue?
Many people come and see the show in order to get in touch with the spirit of Christmas. No matter how many times I hear Slade belted out at me in the shops, it doesn’t make me feel Christmassy! Dickens practically invented our idea of what’s important about Christmas and all the best elements (family and feasting, charitable giving, love and redemption) are there in the show for the audience to savour. Hopefully the audience will laugh, cry and feel a little better about the world. Some of Dickens’s early readings of A Christmas Carol were in aid of great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital which he helped to set up. For that reason, we are helping to raise money for GOSH in the spirit of the original story. After seeing the play and leaving the auditorium full of festive feeling, it’s great that there’s somewhere positive for all that goodwill to go.
Christmas Theatre 2022 will be one of the most crucial festive seasons in stage history. TheQR is talking to as many of those making theatre in the UK this year as possible, to play a small part in raising their profile, and opportunities for a successful run. Though many of us face a tough winter, financially speaking, a magical night of theatre offers a (warm) escape for a few hours, and if you have the expendable income available will help support the livelihoods of those who keep that magic alive.
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