The Ghost of Dickens Past!
Clive Francis Recalls Charles Dickens’ Historic First Public Reading At Town Hall Birmingham
A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens, Performed by Clive Francis Monday 7 December, 7.30pm
Town Hall, Birmingham
On 27 December 1853, Charles Dickens stepped onto the stage at Birmingham’s Town Hall, settled into a large armchair and began his first ever public reading - A Christmas Carol. Now, on Monday 7 December, Clive Francis will give a flavour of the historic occasion at Town Hall, performing his own adaptation of A Christmas Carol and filling the stage with an entire Dickensian landscape.
Dickens’s first reading took place on a freezing, snowy night in front of ”a small family circle of some seventeen hundred persons in the vast Town Hall”. Reporting the occasion, the Birmingham Journal added, “But Mr Dickens did not only read the story; he acted it, too. He cast a thorough individuality about all the characters which brought them warm, living and speaking before everybody.”
Clive Francis’s unique one-man version of the classic novel was adapted by him following his acclaimed RSC performance as the misanthropic Ebenezer Scrooge. In it, he brings to life a whole galaxy of Dickensian characters, from the spectral Jacob Marley to the warm loving Bob Cratchit, from Mrs Cratchit to the sadness of Tiny Tim and, of course, the Ghosts of Past, Present and Future. An evocative score by Philip Sheppard completes the picture.
Charles Dickens was a regular visitor to Birmingham and it was as a fundraising event for the Birmingham and Midland Institute that he offered to give three readings during Christmas Week 1853: The Christmas Carol (twice) and The Cricket on the Hearth. A notice appeared in the Birmingham Journal advising that “Mr Dickens having particularly desired that one of the Readings should be given to an Audience composed of the Working Classes... the Friday Evening shall be devoted to that purpose”.
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