The Storyteller
Charles Dickens is not just one of the great imaginative writers of all time he is also a superb storyteller. As a narrator, Dickens is second to none. The way he tells a story makes his audience, albeit in the privacy of their own armchairs, think they are sharing the tale with a group of friends. The famous phrase Dickens uses to describe the nearness of the Ghost of Christmas Past to Scrooge - as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in spirit at your elbow - brilliantly summing up the intimate style Dickens as the ‘Narrator’ creates for his audience. Dickens’s deliberately conversational turns of phrase suggest a closeness that makes the event he is describing appear as if it is taking place there and then, right in front of you. It is dramatic narrative writing at its very best. But you’d expect that because Dickens was not just a writer of descriptive prose but also an actor and performer. Not surprisingly therefore his ‘readings’ of his work, especially of A Christmas Carol, became legendary theatrical events. Steve Nallon’s Christmas Carol keeps many of the original narrator’s unrivalled descriptions, but it is the ‘casting’ of his characters using famous celebrity impressions that a truly contemporary style is created. Dickens himself was said to be a clever mimic, so even this most individual of versions is in some ways simply following in the footsteps of its great originator.