Charles Dickens at his writing desk (public domain image)
Can’t you imagine it??— two actors having a beer and lamenting their yuletide duty of having to mount Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for the umpteenth time.So much for joys of the season…
That unbearable boredom of actors pressed into service as Scrooge et al. yet again is what prompted Tim Morrissey—then the Artistic Director of Temple Theater in Sanford, NC—to approach North Carolina-based Dickens scholar Dr. Elliot Engel in 1992 about creating a one-man show portraying Charles Dickens writing his Xmas classic.
Dial forward 35 years and we are told this story—minus the imagined beers part— by the first actor to have portrayed Dickens and director of this year’s RedBird Theatre’s performance of The Night Before Christmas Carol,Jeffery West, who is introducing Morrissey in the audience.
Adam Sampieri as Charles Dickens. Photo by Alex Maness
RedBird Theatre Creates a New Xmas Tradition
West has passed the baton of acting the part of Charles Dickens to Adam Sampieri, who holds our attention for the next 90 minutes in this one-man exposé of the creative process of one of the giants of English literature known so well on both sides of the pond.
We meet Sampieri as Dickens shaking off the cold and wet from his midnight jaunt ‘round London Town.He welcomes us — Spirits of the Future — and invites us in,and not just to join him by his fireside. With Dr. Engel’s script we venture much further— into Dickens’ head.While the great Bard might have coined the expression What the dickens, we can think of Professor Elliot Engel’s script as WHO the Dickens.
Sampieri moves from a lectern desk, to a trunk, to admire black silhouette head shots of his four children, and back again and again with quill pen in hand to his Christmas Carol manuscript in the making.
Adam Sampieri as Charles Dickens. Photo by Alex Maness
We learn of his childhood shame of having to visit his father in debtor’s prison.We chortle as he describes his many American fans as classless.
We come to see him as a class warrior of sorts in a most buttoned up Victorian way.Can his pen wield sympathy from the rich and proper for the wretched poor that he sees on his nightly hikes? With A Christmas Carol he hopes to create a book that even the most modest homes will be able to afford and boast of on their mantlepiece.
Adam Sampieri as Charles Dickens. Photo by Alex Maness
Dickens scholor Dr Eliot EngelPhoto courtesy of Dr Engel
You too might especially love the recurring gag built into the script were Dickens catches the drift of his own monologue for bon mots that are the seeds of future works—
…Great Expectations..
…best of times and worst of times…
ETC. ETC.
Above all, Sampieri feels REAL— both when he is in the skin of Dickens, as well as when he is dramatizing Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Marley, or Bob Cratchit etc.
Truth to tell, Engel’s script DOES give us A Christmas Carol deftly woven into his Dickens biopic.We leave the theater feeling both that our holiday itch was scratched and that we are smarter for having taken this easy-to-digest tutorial on one of the most important literary figures of the English language.
There were only two performances of The Night Before Christmas Carol this year, but there is every reason to think that RedBird will continue this uber-holiday tradition. Bookmark the RedBird Theatre website for early warnings of the 2026 performance dates.
Amy Munice is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Picture This Post. She covers books, dance, film, theater, music, museums and travel. Prior to founding Picture This Post, Amy was a freelance writer and global PR specialist for decades—writing and ghostwriting thousands of articles and promotional communications on a wide range of technical and not-so-technical topics.
