'Dickens' recites his perennial favourite at the Westmount Library

With these words, Charles Dickens would begin a public reading to an audience in the Victorian age. On Sunday, Dec. 2, at 3 p.m., actor John D. Huston will give a one-man presentation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Westmount Library, a performance based on Dickens’s own reading of his classic text.

“It’s a dramatisation, rather than a reading or re-enactment,” said Wilfred de Freitas, who worked with the Friends of the Westmount Library to bring Huston’s show to Westmount. “What he’s done is re-created Dickens’s own performance of A Christmas Carol. He’s had specially constructed a facsimile of Dickens’ desk, he dresses like Dickens, and gives a recitation of the Christmas Carol, complete with all the voices, physically contorting himself when necessary to give somebody’s physical appearances. And he does the whole thing from memory. Absolutely incredible.”

Huston has been performing his one-man show for over 11 years, with 300 performances to his credit. He has presented it to sold-out crowds at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Last year, he performed his version of A Christmas Carol at the Atwater Library.

“He’s a very theatrical person,” observed de Freitas. “Very expressive. And very knowledgeable.” After one of Huston’s performances, Dickens’s great-grandson, who also performs his ancestor’s texts, approached Huston to ask if he was related to the family.

Dickens wrote and published A Christmas Carol in 1843, one year after he passed through Montreal during a tour of North America. While in Montreal, Dickens took part in an amateur theatrical performance at the Theatre Royal, where Bonsecours Market now stands. In 1853, Dickens began giving staged readings of his work to large audiences, editing down A Christmas Carol so that the whole of the story could be told in one evening, and travelling around England, Scotland, and even North America. Huston has based his performance on what can be reconstructed of Dickens’s own edited text and presentation of A Christmas Carol, down to the period costume and the facsimile desk.

“I have no hesitation in recommending it,” said de Freitas. “It’s especially great for kids. Last year a friend brought four of them, and they were transfixed.” What makes Huston’s show outstanding, said de Freitas, is simply “the performance. It’s in the telling.”

Huston has made an audio recording of his performance, interspersed with a capella Christmas carols. Copies of these CDs will be on sale at the show. Huston will also be performing A Christmas Carol at a venue in St. Lambert later on Dec. 2. More information on John D. Huston is available at his web site, www.dickensperformer.ca.

Tickets for the Westmount performance cost $10 each, and are on sale at the library’s circulation desk. Tickets will be available up to the time of performance, but cannot be reserved ahead of time.