Victorian street theatre is coming to St Albans city centre this Christmas with OVO presenting a promenade version of Charles Dickens novella The Chimes.
Everybody knows âA Christmas Carol,â the 1843 novella by Charles Dickens that has become an iconic stage and screen holiday special. Far fewer people are familiar with âThe Chimes,â the story he published the following year (and the second in an eventual series of five Christmas books).
Watching artistic director Nick Sandys as Dickens giving a virtual reading of the book for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, it s not too hard to figure out why.
Mind you, Sandysâ performance of âThe Chimesâ â subtitled âA Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year Inâ â is terrific. He takes on 17 characters, differentiating among their regional British accents, and his adaptation of the tale, trimmed from two hours to 90-or-so minutes, flows along smoothly and fairly clearly. Staged live for Remy Bumppo in 2012 and reprised in 2013, it has been thoughtfully reworked for the digital format with the help of video editor Ia