Pip Utton presents DICKENS

Dickens is in turn confessional, angry, delighted, wistful and above all contented, while interrupting the conversation every now and then for readings in the histrionic style of the day. His enthusiasm for taking his work to his fans was boundless. He loved the adoration and the emotional connection with an audience and he welcomed the extra source of income.

This is not just a jolly ‘evening with Dickens’, not simply an entertaining diversion. It is an evening with the man behind the myth. The man proclaiming the virtues of a steady domestic life at the same time as leaving his wife for a younger woman; a man both fascinated by death and terrified by it; a man who above all needed to entertain, whatever the physical cost to himself. The audience will leave thinking not only have they heard some of the finest of Dickens’ writing but that they have also spent time with the man himself.