Why Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is more painfully relevant than ever

But with food banks in demand as never before, John O’Connor – who brings the tale to life in a thrilling one-man show – says the relevance is even more acute in 2022 than it has ever been. John offers the show on Tuesday, December 13 and Wednesday, December 14 at The Spring Arts Centre, Havant and from Wednesday-Friday, December 21-23 in The Music Room, Royal Pavilion, Brighton.

As John says: “We have had Covid and all the other factors as well, not least blowing £30 billion on a failed economic experiment. We are at a time when food banks have never been so frequented and we know that it is only going to get worse. We know that for a lot of people this Christmas is going to be really, really tough, the toughest they've had for a long time.” All of which highlights Dickens’ essential message in A Christmas Carol: “Dickens tells us that the pursuit of greed for greed’s sake is empty and that we are all responsible for each other. The book is about the power of giving and how much it is the power of giving that makes life worthwhile.”

John’s one-man show grew out of Rochester where John lives, a place closely associated with Dickens himself: “There are two Dickens festivals in Rochester a year and there is a lot of cod Dickens, the stuff that tends towards the sentimental. I have also seen a couple of one-man shows based on A Christmas Carol, Simon Callow and Patrick Stewart and those tended to be star vehicles. But actually the first one-man version was the one done by Dickens himself. He would play to 2,000 people a night. He toured all over Britain and America and made more money from his readings than he did from all his books put together. It all just showed the power that he had over an audience. People said that he brought the characters alive in a quite astonishing way, and some of the greatest critics of the time said just what an incredible performance he gave. I started wondering what it must have been like to have seen Dickens tell the story. I thought I would look at what I could do and I went back to the actual script that Dickens used. When he first read it, he did the whole thing which was three hours long and then he brought it down and came up with a 90-minute version which he started doing. I started doing that and it worked extremely well. The point is there is something so simple and yet so extraordinary about storytelling. When it works well it becomes like a conversation with the audience.”

John was in the area touring the show in 2019 but then, as he says, “the music stopped” with the pandemic: “Running a theatre company was pretty scary at the time. In March 2020 we had a tour of Italy with The Importance of Being Earnest. All the actors were sent home. We knew what was coming. And suddenly there was no more theatre for a long time.” John added: “During the pandemic, the director of the show Peter Craze sadly passed away after contracting Covid. The show is dedicated to his memory with gratitude and love.”