In the footsteps of the master

Dickens once toured Ireland reading A Christmas Carol. Now, actor Clive Francis is doing likewise, writes Colette Sheridan

FOR British actor Clive Francis, reading Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a bit like reading the Bible. “It’s cleansing,” he explains. “It goes through all the emotions and you come out a better person at the end of it.”

Francis appears in his adaptation of the classic Christmas morality tale at the Everyman Theatre in Cork from Sunday as part of a national tour. The 66-year-old actor has been performing A Christmas Carol since 2000. He played the central character, Ebenezer Scrooge, in the Royal Shakespearean Company’s production in 1994. The RSC version was adapted by John Mortimer, and Francis says that vast production, complete with musical numbers, is one of the highlights of his lengthy career.

“When I finished the show with the RSC, I couldn’t get it out of my system so I created my one man show. This is my first time bringing it to Ireland.”

This year is the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth. The popular author’s Christmas novella was first published in 1843. It tells the story of the stingy Scrooge and his ideological, ethical and emotional transformation as a result of the supernatural visits of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, as well as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. The novella was an instant hit. The New York Times, in a review published in 1863, noted that the author brought the “old Christmas....of bygone centuries and remote manor houses, into the living rooms of the poor today”.

Francis is a big fan of Dickens. His first television appearance was a role in David Copperfield in 1966. “I must have read nearly all Dickens’s books several times. A Christmas Carol is, to me, a very dear read. It wasn’t difficult to adapt for the stage. I know what characters to hone in on.”

When Dickens realised he could make more money from staged readings of the book rather than sales of it, he toured with his performance of A Christmas Carol. As well as readings in Belfast and Dublin, the great writer also came to Cork in 1858 and drew over a thousand people to the Athenaeum (now the city’s Opera House).

“His reading lasted for an unbelievable three hours. It’s one thing to read for that length of time but to have that amount of voice to fill a hall with no microphone is incredible.

He was an extraordinary man, zigzagging all over the place in a time when there were no airplanes.”

However, as Francis points out, Dickens’s punishing schedule eventually killed him at the age of just 58.

“He did his final tour in Ireland in 1867. That was the year he had to stop all readings and he was dead within a few months.”

But the novelist’s legacy is immense and he made a difference. As Francis points out, Dickens, who was highly politicised, wrote “the little Christmas book”, as he called it, in order to prick the conscience of readers and make them aware of the appalling conditions that children were being forced to suffer as they worked long days for little pay in factories and mines around England.

“So strong was his appeal that he actually impelled the government of the day to make changes to the Poor Laws as well as other smaller acts.”

Francis, who is putting together another show on Dickens and the theatre, says that there are only a few eyewitness accounts describing Dickens the actor. “But from what one gathers, he was fairly mesmerising to watch, allowing each character to come alive through a variety of different voices and facial expressions.

“As soon as Scrooge began to speak, it was as if Dickens had disappeared, presenting instead an old man with a shrewd grating voice and a face drawn into his collar like a great ageing turtle. It’s reported that the audience fell into a kind of trance.”

Francis says that from an actor’s point of view, his seventy minute show is an opportunity “to show off a bit”. Francis agrees that A Christmas Carol is hugely sentimental but thinks it’s stronger for all that.

Performing on a bare stage but for a lectern similar to the one Dickens toured with and a comfortable armchair, Francis relishes his show. “It’s difficult to know what age it’s suited to. The language is dense but I’ve adapted it in a way that’s easy on the ear. I’ve played to children as young as four. I normally say it’s suitable for children aged eight onwards.”

* A Christmas Carol plays at the Everyman on Sunday and Monday