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For more years than I can remember, indeed many more years than I have been performing, I have attended the Rochester Summer Dickens Festival. In the early years I accompanied my father who would either be supporting his friends in The Dickens Fellowship as they gave lectures about our illustrious forebear, or indeed he would be speaking, sometimes giving the oration during the memorial evensong service in Rochester Cathedral, which traditionally brought the event to a close on Sunday evening. Later our roles would reverse, and he would attend the event to support me, as I made my first tentative steps in performing the works of Dickens in public, his nerves so great that he couldn’t sit down, so stood at the back of the hall his hands plunged deeply into his pockets where he would fiddle with loose change – I could always tell if things were worrying him, by the level of jangling!

Rochester of course is regarded as Dickens’ home city, although he never actually lived there. He was born in Portsmouth, spent his happiest childhood days in Chatham, and would return to live his final years at Gad’s Hill Place in the village of Higham, but the great ancient city featured strongly in many of his novels and has become the epicentre of the Dickens tourism industry. So it is natural that the city would want to celebrate their favourite son, and the Summer Dickens was formed, initially as a celebration of his work featuring performances and erudite lectures, and later as a brash large party featuring funfairs, burgers, craft stalls and street theatre. Over the years the Dickensian content grew less and less (although the festival was always in his name), and soon my shows and readings by the Dickens Fellowship were the only programmed literary content, although the streets were peopled with costumed characters engaging with visitors – and it was these folk who have remained the lifeblood of the festival. Naturally we have lost a few over the years, but there are enough of the old crowd who still support the event in varying stages of mobility and health – those that have gone have been replaced, meaning that the characters they represent (Miss Havisham, Mr Pickwick, Bill Sikes, Scrooge, Magwitch etc) never die.

The 2022 festival was a bit of a watershed, in that the weekend was shared with the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations (goodness, that seems so long ago now – a different era of history), and the Dickens events were quite harshly culled, leaving many wondering about the future and we waited with anticipation to see what 2023 would bring, and indeed the latest edition of the Summer Dickens Festival would have a very different look.

The council had taken the decision to pare everything back, and give the festival less of a carnival feel, but more about Dickens, more about focussed fun. To reintroduce a strong literary aspect they had arranged for a separate Literature festival, organised by an outside organisation, to run for the ten days preceding the main weekend, featuring a wide programme of authors and poets speaking about and performing from their work. My main involvement with the 2023 festival was as part of the Medway River Lit programme, organised by the Wordsmithery group run by Sam Hall and Barry Fentiman Hall and and I would be performing Nicholas Nickleby for them on days 9 and 10 of their festival, which coincided with the newly branded Dickens Summer Weekend

I drove down to Rochester on Friday night, and the last part of the journey followed a bright yellow van with black trim which had the word ‘Bumble’ on the back. Presumably it had been christened that due to its colour, but to me it was the first connection with Charles Dickens (Mr Bumble, of course, being the beadle in Oliver Twist). The route to the Medway towns is so familiar to me, and I looked at all of the landmarks as I sped by – the wooded hill which hides Gad’s Hill Place, the great bridge over the River Medway with the view to the left of the ancient castle and cathedral, and the great dockyard, where HMS Victory was built, and where my Uncle Peter served as Captain in the 1960s. I was staying in my usual Premier Inn at Gillingham, and as soon as I arrived had a delicious beef and ale pie for my supper.

I had quite an early start on Saturday morning, even though my first public commitment was not until 12 o’clock when the great parade was due to set off. In the weeks building up to the festival I had been approached by a member of the Council Events Team, with a suggestion that I may like to be involved in a short performance that would be taking place in the Castle Gardens. In the past years the area in the shadow of the great keep has been the location of a giant funfair, and lots of food outlets. There used to be an arena laid out where Dickens character costume competitions were held, which were always incredibly popular, but those have disappeared in recent years. This year the Council had engaged The Pretending People Theatre Company to provide entertainment, which would begin with a recreation of the cricket match from The Pickwick Papers. Although I’d been sent a script for the show, I didn’t quite understand how it was going to work in an open-air setting, and I certainly hadn’t been present at any rehearsals. On Saturday I was due to meet Matt, Becca, Niall and Andy – the Pretending People – as they prepared to undertake a final run through of their performance. I arrived at 9.30 and introduced myself, and they told me that some members of The Pickwick Club were due soon to rehearse too, and so gradually the shape of the show began to become clear to me. Using ‘the old codgers’ from the Pickwickians (their own description, I hasten to add), to represent the players, the famous passage from the novel was recited by from the stage in the manner of plummy cricket commentators. Seats were lined along each side of the pitch, draped with red or blue ribbons, so that one side of the audience would be cheering for the Dingley Dell team, whilst the others would cheer for All Muggleton. I was given the role of umpiring, and as the narration started we all played our parts, hamming it up spectacularly. It was such a clever script, and so well conceived and performed. When the first ball was ‘bowled Matt (from the theatre company) came onto the pitch in a large inflatable zorbing sphere, and took on the action of the ball, being struck to one fielder, rebounding to another and eventually returning to the bowler, as the batsman scurried through for two runs. As soon as the action calmed down, our commentators announced that there would be a slow motion action replay, and the the whole scene was replayed to the accompaniment of the Chariots of Fire theme music, and we all made the same movements but in slowwwwwwwww moooooootionnnnnn,. Great, great fun!

When the rehearsal was over I joined the Pickwickians for a quick drink (Pimms for them but water for me, as I had some performing to do), and then we all ambled slowly down the High Street to prepare for the grand parade. As all the costumed characters gathered it was our first opportunity to discuss the changes to the festival, and opinions varied widely, as is always the case.

Naturally, because the weekend was focussing on being a Dickens Festival, rather than a huge city-wide fiesta, the numbers were down, and many among the participants were quite vocal in their disappointment, and promised not to return if things didn’t change. Others, and I include myself in this, enjoyed the more intimate nature of the event and were glad that it was returning to the original idea and being a celebration of the region’s cultural heritage. One decision that the Council had made was to contain all of the entertainment in the castle grounds, meaning that many of the traders along the High Street would miss out on a bonus weekend of busy trade, and that seems a great shame as they have always been a major part of the event, selling goods and food from stalls along the way.

The parade started out at 12, and the newly appointed Mayor led us on our way. Although the crowds were down, it was great fun, and there were plenty of waving, cheering folk on the pavements.

We wound our way up to the castle, where the Mayor made a speech of welcome, and then we prepared for the cricket match. The audience loved it, and cheered and laughed and clapped as the scene played out. Complete kudos to The Pretending People, for they had pitched the piece to perfection – honouring Dickens, celebrating the silliness of Pickwick and entertaining the crowd without ever being too heavy or literary.

After the cricket match had finished, the performance moved into a second phase with a ‘pub’ scene. The audience were encouraged to bring their seats to the front of the small stage, where various acts would be played out – there would be a yard of ale drinking contest, a pie eating contest, a talent show during which children were invited to display their prowess at making animal noises. The scene started with the members of the group singing a couple of rousing folk songs, playing banjos, guitars, and drums, and then Andy took the mic, in the persona of our host Dicky Bow, to introduce the very first act – a special guest who would start the entertainment in a truly Victorian style, it was ME! The group had asked if I would do a short reading, and I chose the scene from the very start of The Pickwick Papers when the members of the club first meet Mr Jingle and ride on a coach from London to Rochester:

‘Heads, heads—take care of your heads!’ cried the loquacious stranger, as they came out under the low archway, which in those days formed the entrance to the coach-yard. ‘Terrible place—dangerous work—other day—five children—mother—tall lady, eating sandwiches—forgot the arch—crash—knock—children look round—mother’s head off—sandwich in her hand—no mouth to put it in—head of a family off—shocking, shocking!’

As soon as I’d finished the short passage and taken my bows I had to leave the merriment, for I was due at another venue for another appointment. I was now going to be working with the Medway Lit Festival and the first appearance was at an hour long question and answer session in the beautiful and ancient Eastgate House.

My host for the session was Barry, who runs Wordsmithery, and we had worked together at the festival last year. The audience was a decent one and we spent a very relaxed hour chatting about my life, career and various other things. As we went on, so the session turned into more of a conversation, and audience members shared some of their own anecdotes, including a newspaper report of Dickens experiencing an earthquake at his home at Gad’s Hill (the piece reported that CD’s bed was shaken, and added the little detail that it was aligned north to south, Dickens was very OCD when it came to his direction of sleep, and was known to re-arrange hotel rooms to suit this quirk). The hour came to its end all too soon, but it had been a very enjoyable one.

I now had time to grab a brief and rather late lunch (a hot dog, from one of the few street vendors), before I had to set up for my main performance of the day, my one man performance of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, to be performed in the Library, again as part of the Medway Lit Fest. Nickleby was one of the first shows I performed back in the mid 1990s, and indeed received its premier performance at The Rochester Festival, so it was nice to bring it back. The set is relatively simple, featuring a screen, a chair and the replica Charles Dickens reading desk, but the room was set up with various microphones, projectors and screens, so I had to do a bit of rearranging before I was ready to perform.

The show started at 4.30, which is quite late for a traditional festival day, but the Wordsmithery events were continuing into the evening, so there were plenty of people still about and the room filled nicely. Barry introduced me, and I launched into the hour-long show. I was pleased with the performance and it was well received, by the audience and Barry who stared somewhat wide-eyed and said simply, ‘wow, my God!’

There was no time to pause and reflect in the afterglow of a performance, for there was another event straight after mine, so I packed all of the set up, said my goodbyes and drove back to my hotel where I had an early dinner and then an early night (falling asleep to Titanic!)

Sunday was basically a repetition of Saturday, although of course without the need for an early morning meeting/rehearsal and also without the Q&A, meaning that the day would be a little more relaxed. I arrived in Rochester at around 10.30, had a nice cup of coffee in Quills Restaurant, and then very slowly made my way down the High Street chatting to other costumed folk, and discussing our thoughts on the festival’s new look, which naturally varied greatly from person to person.

The parade went well again, and we all ended up back at our cricket pitch where once more the audiences loved the foolishness of the proceedings. Fortunately this time I didn’t have to leave after my reading, so could stay to watch the public house shenanigans, and they were truly entertaining, getting the crowd involved and laughing.

As I didn’t have a show until 4.30, I had quite a quiet afternoon in store and returned to Quills once more where I had a delicious smoked salmon salad, which was much more appetising on a hot, sultry day, than Saturday’s hot dog. I sat down at a table, next to a group of four who asked: ‘who are you? You are not Fagin or Miss Havisham. Your are not Oliver or Scrooge, who are you meant to be?’ I am not very good at just introducing myself as a great great grandson to Charles Dickens, and it was with some reluctance that I informed them of my role in the weekend’s proceedings, but they were very interested and we had a lively chat until our respective lunches appeared.

My Sunday afternoon performance was to be in my traditional venue, the Guildhall, and as Wordsmithery had a full programme of events I needed to move the furniture from my car to the hall between other talks. My window of opportunity fell between the local Steampunk group’s fashion show, and a performance by a youth theatre group, and in the gap I carried my desk, chair, prop box and screen up the very grand, plush Guildhall staircase and into the truly impressive Council Chamber, which had so scared Pip in Great Expectations. I couldn’t actually set up until the youth group had finished, as they needed the whole space, so I piled my things at the back of the hall, next to a cabinet displaying some of the great and impressive regalia of the offices of state of Medway.

At 3 o’clock The Icon Theatre Group arrived and there were a lot of them! Their performance was called ‘Reclaimed’ which, so the programme explained, ‘… is a movement-based theatre piece that explores the notion of childhood in a world where the rich get richer and the poor are punished. When dreams are all you have, would you run away or stay for the fight?’ AS soon as they were ready, the doors were opened and the hall filled with parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and others, guaranteeing a completely full house. The piece worked really well, it was powerful and brilliantly performed, using one of Pip’s lines to build the trapped children’s power ‘I am unsatisfied with my life and calling’ – perfectly pitched in the grand chamber. They performed the piece twice, and having watched the first, I relaxed in an adjoining room during the second. In fact, this was the room that I gave my very first reading of Nicholas Nickleby to members of the Chatham and Rochester Dickens Fellowship back in 1995 – a lot has happened since then!

When Icon had finished, and were packing up, I began to put my things into place, as I only had a few minutes in which to prepare, before my audience (rather smaller than Icon’s unfortunately) took their seats. The Guildhall is my favourite room in Rochester and I gave the show full beans. The audience reacted very well and I was really pleased with my weekend’s work.

It was getting on for 6 o’clock by the time Id packed away, and as I had a 2 1/2 hour drive ahead of me, I got onto the road as soon as I could.

Thoughts about the new style of Dickens Summer? I liked the direction it has taken and I think it is a more effective event than the behemoth it had become, but there are certainly things that need looking at: I think that it is a mistake to alienate the High Street traders and the decision to prevent them selling from the curbside could do with reviewing. I love the idea of running a bona fide literature festival alongside the party at the castle, and Barry and Sam from Wordsmithery had put together a brilliantly varied and stimulating programme of events, but I do wonder if during the Dickens Weekend the two could be more closely aligned. However, having been a little critical of last year’s event, I think that the Medway Council should be congratulated for their vision, and I greatly look forward to returning next year.