PREVIEW: A Christmas Carol, All Saints Hove, December 23
London, 1843. Mist rises off the Thames, which adds to the feeling of claustrophobia on the city streets. The smell off the Thames is almost as bad as the stench on the streets, as raw sewage runs into gulleys in the poorer parts of London.
The streets are thick with mud. Overcrowding is rife. There are more people than the city can cope with and there are nowhere near enough jobs for the many who flood to the centre on the hope of a better life.
Children work alongside adults. Girls to the workhouses, boys up the chimneys. Long hours, exhausting, debilitating work. The people are starving, diseased and tired.
And it is against this backdrop that Charles Dickens wrote a Christmas Carol.
While modern-day adaptations of the telling of the classic tale have reimagined or glossed over the stark telling of the tale, the text does not.
It is a tale of redemption. Of second chances and of charity. Now, 183 years since Dickens put quill to parchment it’s as important and, sadly, as apt as ever.
Mat Jones’ one-man performance of A Christmas Carol aims to stay as close to the first original performance of the text, in 1853.
Unlike every modern adaptation of the story, this production preserves Dickens’ exact words and structure, presenting A Christmas Carol exactly as the author himself wrote it to be performed. No staging, no props, no embellishment — just voice, language and imagination.
“From 1853, Dickens performed the same text that I use on reading tours across the UK and America. The performance of the story has been an almost unbroken tradition ever since. and I was inspired to make my own contribution to that tradition. It was important to me that my performance was faithful to the original text, that the story today’s audiences experience would be the same as the story experienced by Dickens’ own audiences,” Mat said.
Through voice alone, whole worlds unfold. Scrooge’s frost-laced counting house. Fezziwig’s glittering Christmas ball. The tender warmth of the Cratchit family hearth. And the chilling, transformative visits of the spirits.
It will be performed at All Saints Church in Hove.
“While we all know that A Christmas Carol is a story about redemption, a celebration of the joy of generosity and the Christmas spirit it is, at its heart, a ghost story,” Mat explained.
“It revels in the Victorian obsession with the Gothic and reminds us that our Christmas traditions come from many different eras.”
“All Saints Church is grand, Gothic, inviting, and at the same time, slightly imposing. It’s a space that seems to me to be both ideal for the season and for the story. Not only is it an incredible space in which communities can come together, but it provides the kind of backdrop that would’ve been very familiar to Victorian audiences. experiencing the very story that will be performed within it”.
An imposing Anglican structure, built 50 years after the release of a Christmas Carol it is undoubtedly the perfect location for the reading.
Not only that, but Hove itself as a location lends itself to the retelling of the story. In 1840s the growth of Hove from an agricultural settlement and smugglers keep to a residential area, as Brighton expanded, was a far cry from the polluted and crowded streets of London, but life also wasn’t always easy here.
The railway arrived to Brighton and Hove in 1840, which prompted a wave of migration to the south. Brighton’s population surged from 46,661 in 1841 to 90,011 by 1871, making it one of the fastest-growing towns in the country.
Brighton was seen as a place for revellers and heady distraction, but it also housed workhouses in 1843. The Market Street workhouse was built in the 1730s and the Church Hill Workhouse in 1821. The last standing workhouse, the Elm Grove Workhouse, now our General Hospital, was built later, in 1867.
Warren Farm Industrial School, established to house Brighton’s pauper children, was built in 1861.
Dickens’ tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge, then, could well have been written here. The very wealthy were living among the poorest of society and the themes explored in the telling, which resonate even today, will have also been valid in Brighton and Hove.
Mat is an experienced performer and storyteller specialising in one-man productions that honour classic literature in its original form. Alongside his performances of A Christmas Carol, now in its ninth year of touring, he has also created and performed an authentic solo adaptation of The Wind in the Willows.
The stripped-back retelling by Mat is likely to be almost gothic in its deliverance and a perfect reminder for all what this time of year should be about: reflection, kindness and a desire to be a better person.
“Taking the tale from a reading to a performance means it’s all about the audience, they’re welcomed into the story as if we’re experiencing it together,” Mat explained.
“I’ve added just a touch of sound and light to embellish the atmosphere and I like to think Charles Dickens would be pleased with it, just one or two 21st century touches but certainly a performance that he would have recognised as his own.”
Details
Event title and venue: A Christmas Carol, All Saints Church, Hove
Dates: 23 December 2026
Venue: All Saints Hove, The Drive
Hove
East Sussex
BN3 3QE
Tickets: Available here
Accessibility: Level access via entry through the west entrance on The Drive. Wheelchair access from Eaton Road. Accessible toilets and baby change. Equipped with a loop/hearing system. Assistance dogs welcome.
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