Dickens at Pitlochry

Inverness-born actor JIMMY CHISHOLM talks about his acclaimed performance as novelist Charles Dickens, part of the summer season at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

Jimmy Chisholm (right) with Guy Fearon in 'Double Indemnity'

THE SHOW is called Charles Dickens: The Haunted Heart, and it was really the idea of the director, Ian Grieve. He was keen to do a one-man show with me, but I said that would depend on the show – I had done one before, and knew from experience that it can be a helluva struggle for very little reward.

We looked through a load of scripts, but nothing gripped me, until the theatre suggested we commission something. We approached the writer John Clifford about Dickens. He is a big, big expert on Dickens, and was very interested. He turned up what seemed like two weeks later with a full play.

We read it, and it was exactly what I DIDN’T want in a Dickens play! It was one where Charles Dickens basically comes on and reads sections from his books, and I said to John that I really wasnt looking for that approach. We had talked a bit at the earlier meeting about Dickens, and what I was interested in was the kind of stuff about the man himself that had come out of Johns research.

He told me a story, for example, about one time when Dickenss daughter was ill, and he had put her down to sleep in his work room. She awoke in a fever, and heard all these voices in the room, and as she came to she realised that it was her father speaking dialogue from his work into a mirror. He was doing the voices and wearing makeup and everything, just to see if he believed the words himself.

It was that kind of story I wanted in the play, although it’s not really a play in the conventional sense. There are excerpts from his books in it, but hopefully when I’m doing it right you won’t know when I’m speaking as Dickens the character or quoting from his books.

He went through a lot of very hard experiences in his childhood that are reflected in his books, and that was a major part of what made him the writer he was. He suffered for his father’s sins as an embezzler — the whole family were all put in debtor’s prison as a result, and he had to go out and work to pay off the debt. Because of his own childhood he was desperate to protect children from the greed and misfortune and misadventure of adults.

I feel that we are more than ever at the stage when we should be reminding ourselves that children are a blessing and not a nuisance. Myself, the writer, the director and Dickens all had young daughters, and I think his attitude to children touched a nerve in all of us. He was a great organiser and fundraiser for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, and set up a school for street urchins to take them off the street and teach them to be housekeepers and so on, which maybe doesn’t sound very glamorous, but it was pretty much all that was open to them at the time.

He occasionally used to name characters he was about to kill off in his books for real people that he didn’t like, and once or twice people subsequently died in real life and left him feeling strangely responsible. His life was full of strange little stories like that, and it was those kind of things that I wanted John to work into the play.

To his eternal credit, John listened to us sitting there saying this is exactly the play we don’t want, and went away. Two weeks later he came back with exactly the play we DID want. People have said to me that it’s like storytelling, as if you were in a room with Dickens and he was telling you stories.

We see why he wrote his books, why he was fascinated by them, but he always wanted to be an actor as well, and even bought a theatre at one point with the intention of putting on plays in which he could perform, but never got around to it. He loved being a magician as well, and would perform magic tricks for children.

'The Matchmaker' with Jimmy Chisholm (left) and Martyn James

These were all things I had never thought about in relation to Dickens, and the more I have found out about him, the more I realised what a marvellous figure he was. As a kid I liked the stories, but in film or telly versions, because the writing bored me. I think if we could take this into schools, the kids would have a very different view of him. Lots of people have come up and said they were going to go off and read Dickens after seeing the show, and I do believe that we are doing great things for his reputation in Scotland.

Im looking forward to working at Pitlochry again. This is my fourth season, and it suits me in lots of ways. It’s near to my home in Edinburgh for one thing, and I remember going there on school outings from Inverness Royal Academy.

It’s a well attended theatre, and I enjoy it thoroughly. I know it gets criticised for not being challenging enough at times, but I love to go to the theatre, and I can’t stand being challenged, thank you very much. I have no problem with the kind of plays they do at Pitlochry.

I love to work in television and film, and in radio, which I do a lot of, but I think every actor would say that the theatre is their first love. You are responsible for your own creation on stage from beginning to end, you can’t go back and fix a bit. Being there in front of your audience has to be the best thing.

Jimmy Chisholm stars in Charles Dickens: The Haunted Man at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Performances take place on 15, 21, 30 July 2203; 6, 14, 20, 29 August 2003; 6, 12, 17, 27 September 2003; 2, 10, 18 October 2003. See Events Guide for full details of all summer shows at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Box Office: 01796 484626.

Jimmy Chisholm spoke to Kenny Mathieson.