Dickens reads 'A Christmas Carol' in Westmount

Huston, who hails from Saskatchewan and has been playing the role since 1992, is much in demand this time of year, giving performances of his one-man show, based on Dickens's A Christmas Carol, as originally performed by the author. Huston is one of the founders of Saskatoon's independent theatre collective, Live Five.

He was at the Atwater Library on Friday evening, Dec. 1, having accepted an invitation from an old friend, Montreal antiquarian book dealer Wilfrid M. de Freitas. Among nearly a dozen venues where Huston is performing across the country from now until just before Christmas is the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

Huston acknowledges that his resemblance to Dickens has startled even Gerald Charles Dickens, the great-great grandson of the author. "In fact, when I met Gerald, that's the first thing he remarked on," he said, laughing. "He asked if we were related, because the Dickens are a very large family."

Huston's performance is a careful study in 19th century acting technique. According to program notes he prepared, Dickens was judged a very good actor by the leading professionals of his day, although he was still a product of a mid-Victorian theatrical convention whose histrionic style was considerably broader than our own.

"After all, this was before the 'close-up' was invented." The many descriptions of Dickens as a performer all mention his 'free use of gesticulation,' his 'great powers of vocal and facial expression,' and that every fragment of the dialog was treated dramatically.'

Dickens's dramatic presentations of his own works were a sensation in his own day. Standing behind a specially designed reading desk, complete with elevated hand rest, he acted out his own stories, playing all the parts and providing narration.

Dickens's public performing career began in 1853 as a charitable fund raiser, but very shortly became a lucrative second career. Of the 20 works he prepared for performance, A Christmas Carol was the most popular. He performed it year round in a series of tours lasting until just before his death in 1870.

While Huston's performance on stage involves perhaps hundreds of individual poses, facial expressions and shrill exclamations, he said it took him no more than a month to learn everything, even though its an ongoing process. Apparently a lot was written about Dickens's performances, describing them in detail.

If Dickens's 19th century acting style seems thoroughly overblown when judged by the standards of our modern sensibility, Huston maintains it's partly because 19th century actors were mostly on stage before audiences of thousands.

"Acting just was bigger back then," he said. "There were no close-ups, there were no movies, there was nothing but the human body on the stage. And that's what people understood as the language of acting."