Mass, Maine and Christmas Begins

Tags

Boston, Charles Dickens, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Maine, Massachusetts, Portland, Portland Press and Herald, Press Hotel, Santa Claus, Vaillancourt Folk Art

It has been a week or since last I reminisced on my American adventures as prompted by my phone and Facebook, because this has coincided with a period when traditionally I could spend a few days at home with Liz and my family.

But now the great memory generators have cranked back into life again and provided me with a series of images from Massachusetts and Maine. For the last 12 or so years the second part of my tour has begun in Sutton Mass. at the wonderful premises of Vaillancourt Folk Art where the senses are assaulted by Christmas! As you walk into the store every inch is utilised to display a variety of Christmas gifts but mainly the beautifully hand-painted chalkware Santa Claus figures which are cast from antique chocolate moulds.

The company was formed by Judi and Gary Vaillancourt in 1984. Originally based in their house, the demand for the collectables soon outstripped the confines of a kitchen, dining room and bedrooms and over the following years the business expanded until it eventually landed in its present home the Manchaug Mills in Sutton. The buildings date back to 1826 and are a perfect venue for the Vaillancourt family to promote tradition.

Gary and Judi are justifiably proud that they are one of a very few Christmas businesses which are truly American, and it was their connection with Byers’ Choice, another genuinely American Christmas company (it feels so right to be writing about both businesses on Thanksgiving Day), which led to my performing in the mill.

For my first visit The Vaillancourts made an arrangement with the owners of the mill to convert an empty space next to the store into a theatre, which they named Blaxton Hall. With Judi’s artistic flare a stage set was created surrounded by 200 seats, and over the years my performances of A Christmas Carol have become as much a Christmas tradition for me as they have for the audiences who return every year.

I always have a wonderful time with the Vaillancourts and we have had our fair share of adventures over the years. On one occasion my flight from Philadelphia was delayed by thick fog and it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t get to the store in time for the show. After a flurry of panic, phone calls and emails were exchanged and a plan was hatched: Luke Vaillancourt (Gary and Judi’s son, now very much a part of the team) was dispatched to wait for my arrival at Logan airport ready to drive me back as fast as was legally possible, whilst his father-in-law Bob was placed on the Blaxton Hall stage with his guitar in hand to entertain the crowd until I could take over: that warm-up performance is still spoken of in Sutton to this day! When I eventually arrived and relieved Bob, whose repertoire was beginning to get rather stretched, the atmosphere in the room was fantastic: a real sense of camaraderie among friends, and when Scrooge woke up on Christmas morning and discovered that there was ‘no mist, no fog….’ there was a great ironic cheer.

Vaillancourt Folk Art is more than a venue to me, I count the family as close personal friends and it feels most odd not to see them this year.

The other memory that my phone provided me with this week was from Portland, Maine. Portland is a more recent addition to my tour but the city has a special resonance for me. Many years ago when my father David was the President of the International Dickens Fellowship organisation (a post that I was greatly honoured to hold a few years later and one that my brother Ian now undertakes with a great sense of duty, wit and professionalism), he asked me to perform with him a short story that he had discovered. The ‘show’ was based on a piece of writing titled ‘A Child’s Journey With Dickens’ and recounted the childhood memories of Kate Douglas Wiggin, the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. In 1868 Charles Dickens was touring America, performing his readings in cities along the Eastern seaboard. Most of the events were in Boston and New York but there were other venues too, one of which was in Portland. The young Kate, 10 years old at the time, was a huge fan of Dickens and devoured his works, even naming her pets and belongings after his characters – her dog was named Pip whilst her red sled was christened ‘The Artful Dodger.’

Dickens’ reading was one of the biggest events ever seen in the city and the tickets sold out in no time. Of course there was no possibility for a ten year old girl to attend and so Kate simply lingered outside the hall hoping to catch a glimpse of her hero. Sadly she did not.

The next day Kate and her mother were due to take the train to Boston and during the journey the little girl discovered that Charles Dickens was actually sitting in the next carriage and in a moment of Victorian infant chutzpah she plucked up courage to run up and sit down next to the great author! Once he overcame his surprise Dickens fell into conversation with Kate, asking her about her favourite books and characters. She told him that she’d read all of his books and he questioned her, ‘those great thick long books and you such a slip of a thing?’ She simply replied that she skipped the dull bits – ‘not the short dull bits, just the long ones!’

A Child’s Journey with Dickens is a charmingly beautiful account of the meeting and a visit to Portland always brings it to mind. When I was in the city I performed on behalf of the Maine Historical Society and as well as staging a lovely evening in a beautiful venue, they were extremely generous with their research resources and enabled me to build a complete picture of Charles’ visit.

As a final observation when last I was in Portland, two years ago, I stayed at The Press Hotel on Exchange Street which is housed in the old offices of The Portland Press and Herald (formally the largest newspaper in the State and mentioned by Kate in A Child’s Journey). The owners of The Press have honoured the newspaper trade in the décor and dressing of the rooms and it is a fabulous change to the many identikit boxes that proliferate.

My main memory however was the breakfast I ate there – a Fruit and Quinoa Bowl, which comprised of: Pineapple, Banana, Blueberry, Black Quinoa, Basil, Orange Blossom Ricotta and Local Honey. It was quite simply one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten and won my award for ‘Breakfast of the Tour’!

Back in England in 2020. 26 November has really felt like the beginning of Christmas. We have spent the day listening to Christmas songs and driving through neighbourhoods looking at Christmas lights. I even bought myself a Christmas sweater!

What else happened on 26th November? The film has finally been unleased upon the world!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers in America

http://www.geralddickens.com/films.html

#achristmascarol2020

Returning to Highclere

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle, Lady Carnarvon, Lord Carnarvon, The Queen

To miss-quote the opening lines of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: ‘Yesterday I went to Highclere again’. Last December on a very wet night I performed at the magnificent ancestral home of the Carnarvon family for the first time and loved every second of what was an elegant and spectacular evening. The castle was fully decorated for Christmas and the great hall embraced the guests as if that was its sole purpose in life – to entertain and delight. Lord and Lady Carnarvon had erected a small stage in front of the huge stone fireplace and somehow had managed to squeeze 80 chairs around it, and as the audience arrived they were in their finery, as befitted such a venue and occasion.

The evening was a great success and Lady Carnarvon confidently announced that we would repeat the event in 2020….Ah, 2020. Of course all of the best laid plans were abandoned early this year and the thought of returning to Highclere Castle disappeared from my mind.

The great building came to my thoughts once more when I was thinking of locations to use for my film, but when a building has such clients as Downton Abbey beating a path to their door, the location costs would have been exorbitant and actually in retrospect, wouldn’t have provided suitable locations for the sparsity of the story – Highclere would have been too lavish for my version of A Christmas Carol.

However as the summer continued there was a call from Lady Carnarvon, asking if I would be available to join her at the Castle to recreate a little of my performance for a national television network who wanted to make a documentary about Christmas in one of England’s stately homes. I was happy to agree, even though this was not a fee paying event, for the relationship with the Carnarvons is so good and the opportunity to gain some exposure for both my live shows and the film was one I couldn’t turn down.

On Tuesday 24th November, just two days before the release of the film on Vimeo, I drove up the long driveway, taking the opportunity to stop and admire the great building against a beautiful late afternoon winter sky. The drive was lined with mini Christmas trees and two larger versions guarded the front door. I swung the car round on the gravel drive (I knew that this is how you are supposed to arrive as I’ve seen it done so many times before on Downton Abbey). Granted, the staff with Carson the butler at the centre, didn’t line up en masse to greet me, but the house manager John did fling open the door and welcome me back in cheerful, hearty tones. In fact my arrival was such a triumph that I had to repeat it three more times as the TV crew from ITN wanted to capture the moment from a few different angles.

The film crew was of two, Brent and Amy, who both dutifully wore masks as they trailed me around. When I finally entered I stood in the Great Hall of the house with a huge lavishly decorated Christmas tree soaring to the ceiling above me. It seemed extraordinary to me that a year ago we had fitted a stage and eighty people into what now looked like a very small space, but the memories of laughter and bonhomie waved over me as I surveyed the scene. Such was my wonder and such was the splendour that I surveyed the scene three more times, as Brent and Amy recorded it from a few different angles….

Lady Carnavon arrived and we greeted each other from the prescribed safe distance and then made our way into the Smoking Room where we were to record an episode of the Highclere Castle podcast which the Countess has been hosting since June. We sat in comfortable armchairs with the rolling landscape bathed in the glow of a winter’s sunset outside the windows. For such a large house some of the rooms, including the Smoking Room, are surprisingly intimate and it proved the perfect setting for our convivial chat. We talked about Christmas and Charles Dickens’ influence on it, as well as the heavy toll of the pandemic on both the entertainment and tourism sectors, and from there discussed how the lack of opportunities to perform in front of a live audience had presented other opportunities: cue promoting the film!

Having wrapped up the podcast recording it was time to prepare for a performance of a few extracts of A Christmas Carol to the massed audience of their Lord and Ladyship, John the manager, and their assistant Cat, who was also recording the snippets of show for an Instagram link. I was directed to my ‘dressing room’, which is in fact a spare room in the castle and in which I was surrounded by photographs of ‘Porchie’, Henry George Reginald Molyneux Herbert to give him his full name, the 7th Earl of Carnavon, to give his him his title – the Queen of England’s trusted confidante and horse racing trainer.

Once I was nearly changed there was a knock at the door and the voice of Brent asked if he could film me preparing for the show. I let him and Amy in and for the next 15 minutes or so I took cufflinks off and put them on again, took my cravat off and put it on again, took my watch out of the waistcoat pocket and studied it before replacing it, all whilst chatting about the experience of being at, and performing in, Highclere Castle.

Eventually we were ready to go. Lord and Lady Carnarvon settled themselves in two armchairs, whilst John hovered deferentially in the background and Cat set up her recording equipment. After a brief introduction by Lady Carnarvon I began.

Oh, it felt good! Oh, to move in that space saying the lines, creating the poses, telling the story. As I performed I could feel the room full of twelve months before, hear the laughter, see the tears. The idea was to perform very short snippets but I just didn’t want to stop and carried on throughout the first scene until nephew Fred leaves Scrooge’s office on Christmas Eve: complete self-indulgence.

I was more restrained for my second piece, the appearance of The Ghost of Christmas Present represented by the magnificent tree, and for a final clip I performed the closing words of the story to neatly wrap everything up.

When Brent, Amy and Cat were happy we wrapped up the performance aspect of the afternoon and mingled while a bottle of Highclere champagne was produced and we all toasted to the strangest of Christmases.

Having posed with Lady C in front of the tree, keeping a strict two-bough distance (in line with government festive guidelines), I changed out of costume, collected my things and drove away into the night.

For a couple of hours I had been back doing what I should be doing at this time of year – performing. But as I drove a strange thought came to me and that was that in 2020 my show will probably be seen by more people than ever before because on 26th November, the day I would usually be flying into Boston, to begin the final weeks of my tour, my film of A Christmas Carol will finally go live!

Film Link: Films (geralddickens.com)

Lady Carnarvon’s Podcast: Lady Carnarvon launches new Podcast | Highclere Castle

Counting Down to Thanksgiving and the launch of A Christmas Carol

Tags

A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol 2020, A Christmas Carol film, Ebenezer Scrooge, Emily Walder, Gerald Dickens, Ghosts of Christmas, Medway, Rochester

It seems to have been a long time coming and for much of this year it has felt that, between the pandemic and the various political situations across the globe, there has not been much to thank 2020 for. However as we begin the week of American Thanksgiving I can reflect of a year of opportunity and positives as I prepare to launch my first film: A Christmas Carol.

When last we left the saga I had wrapped filming in the ancient city of Rochester and left the entire project in the talented hands of Oscar-winning editor Emily Walder. During the days of filming in Cooling Churchyard, in Rochester Cathedral at The Six Poor Travellers House, in Eastgate House and around the streets of the ancient city, I had told Emily directly, and indirectly, what my vision for the film was, so when we said goodbye in a Rochester car park I was saying a temporary farewell to the project and leaving the next stage to her.

A few weeks passed and from America Bob Byers of the Byers’ Choice company, who not only book and manage my annual tours but also who had commissioned the film, got in touch to ask if there was anything he could see yet? I contacted Emily to ask if there was any way she could create a short trailer for the piece – a few scenes possibly, just to show how the end product may look. I hadn’t been prepared for the amazing production that duly arrived!

I had told Emily that I wanted the tone of the film to be dramatic, dark and sombre – capturing the innermost fears of old Ebenezer Scrooge and as soon as I watched the trailer I knew that she had succeeded. The music she had chosen was exciting with a racing heartbeat of a rhythm, and with lots of fast cutting together of various scenes from all of the locations it served up a tantalising glimpse as to how the film would look. As I watched I just smiled: Emily had created something very special indeed.

The trailer was circulated to all who needed to see it and the response was always the same: ‘Wow! I can’t wait to see the full film!’ Of course that is the point of a trailer but the superb reaction heaped the pressure on Emily to get the entire project completed as soon as possible, whilst juggling her other work which was beginning to make greater demands on her time.

Eventually after many emails back and forward she announced the there was a preview to be watched which she duly forwarded via WeTransfer, and which after an hour or so of gradual downloading I was able to watch. Actually I prevaricated for quite a while as I hate watching and listening to myself, but in the end I opened the laptop and began.

The film is everything that I had hoped it to be, Emily had been true to my wishes and used the specific shots that I had suggested, but also given it so much more. Her use of balancing the colour and the sound, of including carefully selected sound effects and music, of using special cinematic effects sparingly but very effectively turned the production from one man telling a story to a completely immersive film experience. As I watched I laughed and I cried, which considering that I am quite familiar with the book is quite surprising and a testament to her skills.

I am not arrogant or narrow minded enough to suggest that this film is a fully finished perfect piece of work, for there is plenty within its 70 minutes that I would like to either touch up or re-film but of course that is out of the question for now (although I would love to come back to the project next year for a second release!) However my main disappointment could be corrected and that was the opening sequence. Rather than using the dramatic music from the trailer Emily had gone with a melody that reminded me of the famous Hedwig Theme from the Harry Potter franchise, and somehow it didn’t bestow the menace and sense of doom that I wanted. The scene wasn’t helped by my voiceover narrative: ‘Marley was dead to begin with’ which I had recorded in slightly conversational, almost jovial, tones. I asked Emily if it was too late to make a change and she said she would indeed be able to do what I wanted, so I quickly set up my microphone and laptop and recorded a much darker version of ‘Marley was dead….’

Within a few hours Emily sent the new beginning and it was transformed: crows squawk and flutter among the silhouetted branches of a skeletal tree and as the (original) music plays. The viewer flies through the graveyard around ancient tombstones as my voice intones the opening lines, almost spitting out the final ‘Marley was as DEAD as a doornail!’ The screen fades to black and the title A Christmas Carol fills the void. We are off on our journey with Ebenezer Scrooge.

Frustratingly there are also a few moments in the film when we should have done better with continuity as well as ensuring that the numerous ‘Fire Escape’ and ‘Mind Your Head’ signs didn’t feature in the story, not to mention a stack of very modern chairs that I don’t know how we manage to miss on the day.

There are other moments which having seen the end result I would like to re-shoot from a point of view of my own performance, I would like to play about with characterisations a little more at certain moments, and use a few more of the cinematic tricks that we learned were possible as we filmed, but that is all for another time.

For now I think that with a crew of only three, all socially distancing in masks, and on a very short timescale and on a limited budget, Emily, Jordan and I have produced something that I am very very proud of!

On Thursday 26 November you can see for yourself for that is when the finished product goes live. To view the film go to the dedicated page on my website, Films (geralddickens.com) and click the button! Once you have paid for the rental and clicked to watch you will have access to the film for seven days, during which time you can view it as often as you like. From the launch date there is month until Christmas – so why not rent the piece as a gift for family, friends or for colleagues in lieu of a cancelled office party?

Yes 2020 has been a hard, difficult, and frightening year for us all but through it all rose the opportunity to make this film and that is something that I am truly thankful for!

http://www.geralddickens.com/films.html

#AChristmasCarol2020

Way Out West

Tags

#AChristmasCarol2020, California, Canada, Corona del Mar, Film trailer, Hollywood, Mission Inn, Newport Beach, Ojai, Riverside, Spa

With a glance back through a few historic posts on my phone this morning reminds me of some fun times that I have spent in California over the years, so for today’s reflections I thought I would return to The Golden State, shrug off a wet English winter and bask in the warm sunshine for a while.

My first connections with California date back to the very start of my touring years, when I was managed by an indominable lady named Caroline Jackson who originally hailed from Alabama – a real Steel Magnolia! Caroline had watched me perform at the ’95 Dickens on the Strand festival in Galveston and proposed that she instigate a performance tour for the following year. We would work together for around 13 years and I owe my much of my current success to Caroline’s foresight. We certainly had our difficulties and disagreements over the years, but Caroline opened many doors to me and I shall always be grateful to her for that.

Putting together the first your wasn’t easy for Caroline because there was no history or reputation to promote; the family connection was useful of course, but potential sponsors wanted to exactly what they would be getting for their money. Our big break was the forming of a connection with the Historical Hotels of America register, which promoted a collective of some of the most beautiful resorts in the country.

One hotel that liked the opportunity of hosting me was the Ojai Valley Inn nestling high in the mountains to the North West of Los Angeles and I travelled there for many years: it was like a Heavenly oasis.

One of the things that made my visits to Ojai so special was that I had to fly into the terrible sprawl of concrete and glass that makes up LAX airport, and then mercifully leave the city behind me. I would collect a rental car and then make my way through the the streets of LA (indeed my first ever experience of driving in America on ‘the wrong side of the road’ was during rush hour in LA – I decided then that if I could drive there I could drive anywhere!). As I hit the freeway towards Ventura County and rose towards the hills I could see a layer of smog behind me and by the time I arrived in Ojai (pronounced ‘Oh-Hai’) the only smell was of eucalyptus and the only sound was that of cicadas as the sun set turning the mountains pink. It is no coincidence that the resort became Shangri-La in Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon movie.

The hotel itself is a 5 star spa resort with amazing facilities (I used to treat myself to a massage or a round of golf during my stay), and the suites are spread around the grounds in a collection of brightly tiled Spanish villas.

In those early years of performing my shows were often dinner theatre events, with me performing each chapter of A Christmas Carol between courses of a lavish meal. The format was a difficult one as the timings of the performances had to be in complete accord with the kitchens where various chefs turned the air blue because their beautifully created dishes sat unserved whilst I continued to prance around the dining room. At Ojai the dinner was served ‘family style’ with large platters of food being laid on the tables for the guests to help themselves: it worked superbly. I don’t remember the details of the menus there except for a delicious salad with persimmons, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

As we dined a troupe of madrigal singers would surround each circular table and sing carols and folk songs (‘The Boars’ Head Carol comes to mind) and the effect of the harmonies was exquisite.

Yes, the Ojai Valley Inn and Resort was a beautiful place to visit and for many years was my favourite venue on tour.

Also in California, to the east of Los Angeles, is the city of Riverside where each February a fabulous festival takes place to celebrate the life of Charles Dickens, who was born on the 7th of that month. I have visited Riverside on many occasions, sometimes for the festival and sometimes at Christmas to assist with their promotional activities and have always had great fun there but my most memorable moment came when I wasn’t even in the United States at all.

In 1996 I was due to appear at the February festival and give a speech entitled ‘Dickens the Businessman’, in which I would talk about Charles’ entrepreneurial nature as well as focussing on his rags-to-riches story of success, which appeals to a country built upon such dreams. However the previous December I had had a run-in with the charming officers of the INS. Through sheer ignorance and naivety I hadn’t appreciated that I would require a visa to perform in the USA and when I had arrived on American soil I was taken off to a small room and told in no uncertain terms that my presence in the country was not appreciated! Now, it so happened that my first performances on the trip were due to be in Canada, so the officer sent me on my way telling me to make sure that all of my papers were in order by the time I returned.

During my few days in the land of the maple leaf, representations were made and meetings arranged with the result that by the time I returned to America I had been given a temporary ‘once in a lifetime’ pass, in lieu of a visa. But I was told that I must have applied and been approved for the appropriate visa (a P3, to be precise) before I tried to work in America again.

I now faced a problem because the whole process of being granted a visa is a very long drawn out one that requires months to complete, and I was due to perform at the Riverside Festival in just a few weeks time. My agent Caroline and I made a decision, to preserve good will I would attend the festival as a guest, taking no payment for my time, so as far as the INS were concerned I would not be working . But when I arrived in early February I was once again carted off to a private interview room, where my suitcases were opened and my costumes and props revealed. The officers picked each item out with the latex-gloved hands as if they were hard drugs and laid them on the table and asked me to explain. With sweat beading I stammered that I was due to appear at the festival, that I was giving a speech, doing some shows but I wasn’t working, I wasn’t being paid…the officers had all of the information about my trip on their computers: they knew I was going to Riverside, they showed me web pages advertising my visit. They were expecting me. Questioning continued and they elicited from me that I would be staying at the beautiful Mission Inn Hotel in downtown Riverside. Who would be paying for the room? Who had paid for my flight? And that is what sealed my fate because it was the festival who had bought my ticket and who would accommodate me during my stay, and that, proudly announced the officer, was payment!

I was placed on the next flight home and refused entry to the United States of America.

In Riverside I was due to give my speech the next day to an audience of wealthy and successful business folk from the city (many of whom were festival sponsors, therefore important to please), and I wasn’t even there, in fact the only thing that had made it to Riverside was my top hat which had been purchased in America (from a company called Hats in the Belfry) and shipped to the venue. And so it was my first performance in Riverside was delivered by phone from my front room in England with a cup of cocoa to hand, whilst the audience sipped champagne in the elegant surroundings of the Mission Inn. My top hat was placed on the lectern to give them something to look at!

It is strange to think that now the World is in such a place that speeches and even performances are being delivered remotely via Zoom or Teams every day. Back then, however, it was a new phenomenon.

I was fortunate to visit Riverside on many occasions after that first attempt and have always had a brilliant time there.

With Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

The Mission Inn, Riverside

In more recent years I have been attending a new Californian venue and that is at Rogers Gardens in Corona del Mar, close to the affluent and beautiful beachside resort of Newport Beach. Rogers Gardens is a large garden centre and nursery and during the Christmas season have impressive displays of decorations and ornaments. In the heart of the centre there is an open air amphitheatre, originally built so that horticultural demonstrations could be given, but a few years ago it was decided to try and use it for open air theatre (which when you are in Southern California is a safe option!).

I was asked to perform twice on each day I was there, once in the afternoon and once at night, and a local tech company was engaged to rig up theatre lights and a sound system.

I used to do a lot of outdoor theatre in England, mainly at tourist attractions, but this was a new experience for me on tour and an exciting one. The first performance was in the blazing heat of the afternoon and whilst the audience were shaded by huge parasols I was alone and exposed! In my heavy frock coat I was sweltering and sweating profusely, and my forehead was getting redder and redder as the show went on. I performed as much as possible without the coat but the heat was still unbearable and I was heartily relieved when I finally said ‘God Bless Us Every One!’ For the next day I made sure I had plenty of sun block on and although that protected me from sunburn it also streamed into my eyes stinging to such an extent that I couldn’t open them, meaning I gave most of the show blind! All new challenges, that was certain.

Even in the short time that I have been visiting Rogers, three years I think, I have built up quite a following, with a loyal and appreciative audience. Rogers Gardens is an amazing and unique venue and I very much hope to return soon.

Whenever I have visited California, flying in or out of Los Angeles, I look across to the Hollywood sign on the distant hills – and dream of being in movies. And now in my own small way I am close to joining the ranks of film makers.

Today the trailer for my forthcoming is released on my website prior to the film’s release on November 26th. Watch the trailer and spread the word!

#AChristmasCarol2020

Memories from the Mid Continent Public Library Service.

Tags

Baseball, Kansas City, Library, Mid Continent Public Library, Snow

It was no surprise that following the pictures from Omaha my phone should choose to then remind me of my times in the Kansas City area, for the two venues, being geographically close, inevitably have been paired on my tour during recent years.

Woodneath Library Centre

The picture that my phone produced was from two years ago as I prepared to perform at the Woodneath Library in Liberty, Missouri, but my relationship with the Mid Continent Library Service, who own and manage Woodneath, is not a recent one – oh, no, I have been performing there for longer than any other venue on my tour. My first visit was in 1995.

My career as a performer of Charles Dickens’ work began in England in 1993. That year marked the 150th anniversary of the first publication of A Christmas Carol and I, as an actor, had been approached by a local charity asking me to recreate one of my great great grandfather’s famous readings as a fundraiser. I reluctantly agreed, and that decision changed my life.

In 1994 I performed The Carol a few times in the UK and one show was watched by a representative from the Galveston Dickens Festival where my Dad had been appearing for the past three years. After the show we all chatted. My father didn’t wish to travel any more and was keen for me to take over the mantle, he had made the introduction with a view to making that happen.

And sure enough, when December ’95 came around I was on a plane heading to Texas. I spent a weekend becoming part of ‘Dickens on the Strand’ which was an amazing time, but when Sunday evening came I didn’t fly home to England, I boarded a flight for Kansas City, Missouri.

The superb festival in Galveston had inspired a similar event in Kansas City which was the brainchild of the Missouri Rep Theater Company and my father had worked closely with them over the previous two years as a consultant. He had attended the inaugural festival in ’94 and now I was stepping into his shoes to carry on the legacy.

But there was a timetabling problem: The Galveston festival finished on Sunday evening and the Kansas City one wouldn’t begin until the next Friday, leaving me doing nothing for four days in a rather luxurious hotel.

Enter the Mid Continent Library Service. The Charles Dickens Holiday Fair organisers thought it would be great publicity for their festival if I could get out and perform in front of as many people in as many areas around downtown Kansas City as I could, encouraging them to visit the Convention Center at the weekend. The library service, which is based in Independence, has branches all over the Kansas City region (thirty-five currently) and so presented the perfect solution.

During that first year I was conducted from venue to venue by a lady named Linda who was volunteer with the festival. I remember that she had a stylishly coiffured bob of platinum blonde hair and wore a large fur coat, so dark that it was almost black: she looked a bit like a walking pint of Guinness!

In those days I used to perform three times a day and, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the performances were given as readings and were well received. The following year we repeated the exercise, but during that year the Holiday Fair went bust, meaning that there was no reason for me to return to the Kansas City region in ’97.

Except The Mid Continent Public Library Service had other ideas. The appearances had proved so popular that they wanted to continue the relationship and booked me to return to Missouri in 1997 and I have been going ever since, except for the years when I ‘retired’.

Memories? too many to mention! In the early days I used to be looked after by two librarians in the events and programmes team, Miriam and Marlena, and we would spend whole days driving from one branch of the library to another, each performance punctuated by a huge meal in various restaurants.

Performing in a library space was strange, for although the audiences were relatively small, the buildings themselves were built to soak up sound, meaning that projecting my voice was incredibly difficult and I would frequently end up very tired and hoarse after a day’s performing.

A Library Set

Mid Continent not only enjoyed the audiences that I drew but also the attendant publicity that came with my visits and we often had to find time for media events and interviews between the branch visits. On one occasion we were due to have a very early morning radio interview at a station who broadcast out of a small shack across the state line in Kansas. There was heavy snow on the ground and the air was filled with blizzard conditions as we crawled slowly on. I was in costume as we had to drive straight to a library branch as soon as the interview was done.

At one point of the journey we reached the bottom of a steep hill and the route up was slick and icy meaning that we couldn’t proceed. However Marlena noticed that the route DOWN the hill had been well used by various trucks meaning we would be able to get up the hill by driving on the wrong side of the road. Of course a problem would arise if a car should be legitimately driving only to be confronted with us squirming up the slope, so I rather gallantly, or foolishly, volunteered to walk ahead of Marlena’s car to warn any oncoming traffic. I wrapped my scarf around my neck and pulled my top hat low over my forehead and held my walking cane ahead of me to alert anyone who may be there. It was fortunate that I did, for indeed a pick-up truck driven by a bearded guy in a baseball cap did start the descent. I waved my cane high in the air, matching the movement with my other arm until he stopped and stared at me, mouth open.

To understand his shock you have to relive the scene from his viewpoint: He was driving into a whiteout, nothing to be seen, an alien landscape ahead of him. What was that? A shape, a shadow, a figure: out of the mist appeared a ghost, the ghost of a Victorian gentleman waving in tormented anguish. If the scene had been included in a 70’s movie our pick-up driver would have looked at a half emptied bottle in his hand and shaken his head, before tossing the liquor out of the car window!

On another occasion we had a little time before we needed to be at a venue so the M&Ms decided to take me to a baseball batting cage where I could try some hits. I was fitted with a helmet and gloves but other than that I was in full costume as the automatic pitching machine pelted balls at me.

It was during these early years that I performed at the Blue Springs branch where the head librarian was Kimberley Howard. During subsequent years Kimberley rose up the ranks and began to work on the programming team, initially alongside Miriam and Marlena and more latterly on her own. For the past goodness-knows-how many years Kimberley has been the one who has booked me and looked after me during my stays.

With Kimberley (r) and the team

On her watch my performances have changed somewhat as the interest and audiences have grown. The smaller branches have not been able to accommodate the growing numbers and Kimberley has found other ways of presenting my shows to her patrons – the biggest being in a facility attached to a retirement community called the John Knox Pavilion where we pack around 900 people in, and the amazing thing about it is, that Mid Continent offer all of their programmes for free!

You can imagine therefore, given our history, that Kimberley and the team were very sad that I couldn’t travel in 2020 but as has been their way over the years they weren’t going to let a thing like a global pandemic get in the way of their programming.

Mid Continent Library Service have been instrumental in getting my new film made, and have assisted financially in the production, so our relationship which goes so far back is now even stronger and deeper than ever before.

Memories from a Samsung: Omaha, Nebraska

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Bill Sikes, Doctor Marigold, Ebenezer Scrooge, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Historic home, Nebraska, Omaha, The Signalman, Trans Siberian Orchestra

Yesterday’s alert on my phone reminded me that two years ago I was being driven through very heavy snow towards Lincoln, Nebraska from the city of Omaha where I was performing at various venues on behalf of The Douglas County Historical Society, as I had done for many years before that.

My chauffeur on that day, as on so many in Omaha, was Lee Phillips and it was he and his wife Suzy who were responsible for taking me to the most central spot in the USA where sea and shining sea are as far away as it is possible for them to be.

Susie and Lee had seen me perform in Williamsburg, Virginia (no doubt the subject of a future post if my Samsung decides to remind me of times there), and as she was on the board at the Historical Society thought that a fundraiser featuring my shows would be a good idea. As soon as she could she marched into the office of the Society’s Executive Director, Kathy Aultz, and told her that ‘we MUST have Gerald Dickens perform’. Now, if Kathy had known Susie well, known her single-minded attitude, known how once she had an idea nothing would stand in her way, she may have simply said ‘alright let me know what we need to do’, but at that moment Kathy was new to the role and was trying to pick her way through all sorts of budgets, procedures, lists of employees, board members, volunteers. Her desk was covered and her mind was whirling, when suddenly in came this woman demanding that they all go on a road trip to the Kansas City area to watch a distant relative of a dead British guy performing A Christmas Carol. Kathy gave in and agreed to this hair-brained scheme. It is a story that both Kathy and Susie tell now with a great deal of humour and affection.

So, having seen me perform and understanding the possibilities, the Douglas County Historical Society put things in place to bring me to Omaha.

Over the years I have performed in many venues around the city but the two constants have been the General Crook House, a wonderfully atmospheric old property which is open for the public to tour, as well as being the HQ of the Society, and the Field Club – a stylish golf course where Lee just happens to be a member. The latter location hosts the largest audiences of my Omaha visits as we take over a spacious function room for an afternoon tea performance. The room is packed with tables as a large audience of locals and bus tour passengers crowd in to begin their Christmas celebrations.

The Field Club

While the audience is having their tea I have plenty of time to sit and relax, maybe chat to some of the volunteers or watch golf on tv in the wonderfully named ‘cry room’, a small bar where disconsolate golfers drown their sorrows after a frustrating round.

When the tea is finished and cleared Kathy welcomes the guests and introduces me.

Now, up to a few years ago I would walk up onto the stage, take the applause, say a few words of introduction and then start the show, but in recent years I have created a more theatrical opening to the performance: after the introductions, music fills the hall (the melancholic, atmospheric opening bars to the Trans Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve/Sarajevo classic which is based on ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, the only carol mentioned by name in A Christmas Carol’). When the music dies away it is replaced by a church bell tolling as the hunched figure of Ebenezer Scrooge slowly walks to an imaginary graveside.

The idea works well so long as there is the equipment to play the sound effect as in most venues there is and you would expect a large function room to have the facility to play music, wouldn’t you? Ah, how dull my tours would be if everything was so simple!

At the Field Club the music for the entire facility used to be generated from an audio system tucked away in a tiny little cupboard near the admin offices, but nowhere near the stage area. To play the music cue it was necessary to plug my phone into the system and at the appropriate moment press ‘play’.

Simple.

However…. Kathy was giving the cue on stage and I was at the back of the room ready to enter through the audience, so we had to engage someone to operate the phone (complete with my access code in case it locked), but as they were stuck in the little cupboard there had to be yet another person in the long corridor waiting to relay the signal. This is how it worked: Kathy said ‘and so please welcome Gerald Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol’, I waved to whoever was in the corridor, they waved to whoever was in the cupboard, they hit play and hopefully the sound effect filled the room. To allow for the inevitable delay, I would start the process a little early so that the music started at the perfect moment, however there were a few occasions when Kathy would be on the point of finishing but just as I was giving the signal she would remember something else she needed to say, and there would be a flurry of hand signals to stop the process!

Last year the Field Club had invested in a new system which allowed the music to be played from within the room itself and although it made for a much simpler and more relaxing start to the show, I did rather miss our adventurous Heath Robinson style set up of years past!

The other venue, the Crook House, is a perfect setting for Victorian story telling. The dining room is cleared and a small stage set up in a large bay window, more of an alcove really. Due to the lack of space I am not able to do my larger theatrical-style shows there, so I usually turn to my smaller repertoire: Doctor Marigold, The Signalman, Sikes and Nancy and A Tale of Two Cities among others. The audience numbers around 40 and such is the intimacy of the setting we have all become good friends over the years.

Actually I have a permanent presence at The Crook House, for a few years ago Kathy arranged to have a life sized carboard cut out of me made to help promote my visits: my alter ego stands quietly in an office and has been christened ‘Flat Gerald’

Of course every venue has its own eccentricities, and The Crook House is no exception to that. One year, I think when I getting all dramatic in the middle of Sikes and Nancy, there was suddenly the sound of a buzzer sounding sporadically. Eventually both I and Kathy realised that the sound coincided with one audience member stretching his legs. I was continuing the show almost on auto pilot, transfixed by this gent’s ability to buzz at will, whilst Kathy quickly realised what was actually happening. The room, having been the house’s formal dining room, had a little bell push under the carpet near to the spot where the hostess would have been seated, so that she could surreptitiously call for the servants to attend and clear the table. Our poor audience member was completely unaware that his foot was activating the hidden switch every time he stretched his leg out.

There have been plenty of other venues in and around Omaha – book shops, high schools (including one performance in the cavernous surroundings of a basketball court!), and more recently senior living communities, but every event is organised by the small and dedicated staff at The Douglas County Historical Society and at every performance Kathy and Susie are there overseeing every detail. As with so many people that I have worked with they have become close friends and valued colleagues.

The Historical Society were one of the prime movers in requesting that I make a video of my show to distribute to their regular audience members and so began the process that will come to fruition on November 26 when my film will be released.

A Christmas Carol: An Eighty-One Man show

The extraordinary year that is 2020 continues to play tricks and confuse. In Britain we are entering a new period of lockdown whilst in America it is not only the pandemic that is occupying the thoughts and passions of a nation. Nothing seems settled or ordered.

My smart phone and various social media sites delight in telling me what I was doing on this day last year, two years, five years, seven years ago, and I have been reminded that I would normally have been in America by now, performing in those beautiful venues filled with happy folk celebrating the holiday season.

So I thought that it would be an enjoyable exercise to allow my phone to set the agenda and to remind me of years past:

Today, images from Pigeon Forge popped up and I realised that I would usually be in that extraordinary resort at the foot of the Smoky Mountains. On the garish strip where the Titanic crashes into its iceberg just across the street from King Kong clambering up the Empire State Building, and where food outlets jostle with dinner theatre joints, the Inn at Christmas Place stately reposes like a respectable Alpine hotel looking upon the neon sprawl around it with an air of elderly resignation (the hotel is not old, I should point out, but it has the demeanour of a respectful yet indulgent aunt presiding over the unseemly bustle of Pigeon Forge).

The atmosphere within the Inn has always been friendly as most of the audience members are also residents and many have become close friends over the years. For example a couple of years ago one regular audience member Gary took me up into the mountains and let me drive his magnificent ‘Batmobile’ Corvette and as a self-confirmed petrolhead I was in Heaven!

The Inn has a season-long series of events and many is the time I have bumped into Father Christmas and posed for photographs with him in front of the great Glockenspiel that dominates the lounge at the base of the staircase.

Time spent in Pigeon Forge has always been a happy one, and on days off there is the single road that leads out of town towards Gatlinburg and from there up into the sheer natural splendour and beauty of The Smoky Mountains. My visit is usually at the beginning of November and sometimes the sun has been brightly shining giving spectacular displays of fall colours, whereas in other years the cloud has hung low and the mountain road has been impassable due to snow and ice.

As Pigeon Forge often came at the very start of my annual tour it was always a venue where the show began to develop for another year. The way my one man performance of A Christmas Carol has grown and morphed over the decades is fascinating, and is based purely on a natural progression rather than on any specific or conscious decisions on my part. Occasionally I have decided to introduce a new passage or phrase (there is so much of the novel that I am unable to bring to the stage – so much rich material that it pains me to leave in the wings that occasionally I slip in a favourite sentence or scene), but on the whole changes to the performance arise out of audience reaction or just a sense that comes to me during the telling of the story. In fact the whole look of the play arose out of an improvisation in 1996 when I found myself in a library in Alabama about to give a reading (that is how I performed in the first couple of years) only to discover that I had left my book in the previous venue!

Once I had got over the sense of helpless panic that enveloped me and realised to my surprise that I knew the words by heart and did not actually need the book, I started to move around the space available to me. I grabbed a chair that could represent not only the chair in Scrooge’s office but which also doubled and tripled up as that at his fireside and even his bed. A stool that had been left in the room was commandeered for Bob Cratchit to sit at and when it had been moved during the Fezziwig scene (‘Clear away? There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away with old Fezziwig looking on!’) it sat at the back of the stage until I realised I could use it to represent poor Tiny Tim later in the show. In fact very little has changed with the general blocking, the shape, of the show since that empathetic day in Alabama.

But every year the performance takes on its own feeling or flavour, sometimes it is more comedic and sometimes it is darker, more sombre. Over recent years the narrative has become less dramatic and more conversational, which has improved it beyond measure.

And so it was that each year in Pigeon Forge the small audience of 80 or so would get to see that particular year’s version show for the first time and being regulars and friends would feel not only able to pass comment, but expected to, and over the following five weeks or so the show would grow and develop and change some more until it arrived back at The Inn at Christmas Place, ready to begin another cycle.

This year of course the show takes on a new format all together as for the first time it will be available to watch on film and hopefully all of my old friends in Pigeon Forge will be watching, as will those in every other venue that I have visited over the last 25 years or so. But there will new audiences too, those who have been brought to the film by word of mouth and rigorous marketing. It is an exciting time, but at the very heart of whatever develops are people like the 80 in Pigeon Forge who have been part of creating my one man show.

The official trailer for the film will be released very soon, along with details of how to access and rent it: watch this space!