A Christmas Carol

Sunday 3, Monday 11 & Monday 18 December

2pm & 7pm

£29.50 / £14 children

Family tickets 2 adults & 2 children £75

A booking fee of £2.50 per ticket applies

GUY MASTERSON - Performer
After obtaining a Joint Honours degree in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Cardiff University in 1982, Guy studied drama at UCLA's School of Drama and started as an actor in 1985 in Hollywood. He returned to the UK in 1989 to study further at LAMDA. He is an multi-award winning actor, playwright, director, producer, international presenter, dramaturge and renowned acting and executive coach.

Following a conventional start in plays, film and television, Guy began solo performing in 1991 with The Boy's Own Story and thence Under Milk Wood in 1994 and Animal Farm in 1995. He first produced/directed in 1993 with Playing Burton and participated at the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in 1994. Over the following 28 seasons he was creatively associated with many of Edinburgh's most celebrated hits, and his company, Theatre Tours International Ltd, became EdFringe's most awarded independent theatre presenter - garnering 8 Scotsman Fringe Firsts, 3 Herald Angels, 25 Stage Award nominations (including 4 wins) together with numerous lesser awards.

Guy also directed Edinburgh's two biggest grossing dramatic hits: 12 Angry Men - famously starring a cast of well known comedians including Bill Bailey, Dave Johns and Phil Nichol, which then toured Australia and New Zealand - and The Odd Couple (2005) starring Bill Bailey and Alan Davies. He also originated One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (2004) starring Christian Slater and Mackenzie Crook which transferred to the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End, later to The Garrick and on a national Number One tour. His 2009 production of Morecambe transferred to The Duchess Theatre in the West End and won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment plus another nomination for the actor playing Eric.

At Edinburgh 2014 his epic 30 actor adaptation of Animal Farm with Tumanishvili Film Actors Theatre of Tbilisi, Georgia won the Stage Award for Best Ensemble. His 2018 hit production, The Marilyn Conspiracy, was due to transfer to London in June 2020 but was postponed by Covid19. It will finally open at the Park Theatre in June 2024. His Edinburgh 2019 hit, The Shark Is Broken opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End in October 2021 and was Olivier Award nominated for Best New Comedy. It since played seven weeks in Toronto in Autumn 2022 and 18 weeks at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway from August 2023.
Most recently, he directed Picasso: Le Monstre Sacré with Peter Tate at the Playground Theatre in London, and co-directed an award winning new epic musical, The Marvellous Elephant Man, at the 2023 Adelaide Fringe Festival and Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
He won The Stage Award for Best Actor in 2001 for Fern Hill & Other Dylan Thomas. He was also nominated in 1998 for A Soldier's Song, in 2003 for Best Solo Performance for Under Milk Wood, and again for Shylock in 2011. In 2003, he received Edinburgh's most prestigious accolade, The Jack Tinker Spirit of the Fringe Award. His most recent solo work, A Christmas Carol, has sold nearly every ticket over 6 festive seasons since he premiered it in 2017.

Guy's theatrical commitments have largely kept him out of mainstream film and television, however, he made the obligatory appearance on Casualty (Christmas Special 2004) and has been the Franziskaner Monk - the face of the premium German weissbier - since 2007! He also writes plays, screenplays and poetry, and is an executive performance and confidence coach and theatrical dramaturge. His passion is to bring great new ideas to life and fresh talent to the stage.
He is married to Brigitta and father to Indigo and Tallulah… (Visit GuyMasterson.com for further details)


NICK HENNEGAN - Adaptor & Director
Nick's first professional outing as a writer and director was a one-person version of Shakespeare's classic, Henry V - Lion of England which hit at Edinburgh 1992, Stratford-upon-Avon and toured the USA, Ireland and the UK. His second Shakespeare adaptation, Hamlet - Horatio’s Tale, featured Sir Derek Jacobi. Both were reprised at Edinburgh 2018 (starring Kizzy Dunn) to great acclaim. His domestic ghost story, A Ghost Of A Chance, won a Guinness Award through the Royal National Theatre; and P.A.L.S., a tragicomedy about four friends growing up in Birmingham, attracted critical acclaim and record audiences in the city, and was reprised at Edinburgh 2019 along with his new adaptation of Romeo & Juliet.

He established Maverick Theatre Company with musician Robb Williams in 1994. Launched by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, it was the city’s first regular producing pub theatre. He has written, produced and presented numerous radio documentaries including Images From Within and Susan And Friends (Sony Radio Award Winner) and The Pocket Guide to Rock (24 part series for Global Radio) and presented for numerous commercial and BBC radio stations in the regions and in London. He wrote and directed the short film Boy Girl Boy Bike and has written numerous TV commercials for Birmingham Cable/Telewest/Virgin Media. He also won an erotic fiction award for a short story with Chrysalis Books, and has written theatre reviews and articles for numerous publications. His acclaimed four-person adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol enjoyed sell-out runs in Birmingham and London, and he adapted and directed this solo version with Guy Masterson. He edited Confessions Of A Butcher Boy by Norman Raybone and released a stream of consciousness diary from 1997 about running a theatre company, How to Make A Crisis Out Of A Drama! He wrote and directed the theatrical promenade tour, The London Literary Pub Crawl which is running in the West End of London. For International Dylan Thomas Day in 2015 he produced The Roaring Boys.
He was nominated for a millennium Creative Briton award, has an MA in Creative Producing from the University of London, and won a Society of London Theatre, Stage One bursary award.

ROBB WILLIAMS - Composer
Robb has always been passionate about creating music and started his first band at Art College in Maidstone whilst studying for his degree in illustration. That was during the heady days of Punk where he was "forced" into playing guitar, but his real love lay in the burgeoning world of electronic music so Robb quickly moved onto keyboards, performing and composing with several bands around the Midlands.
Robb's first foray into the world of composing for theatre was for Nick Hennegan's Henry V - Lion of England, a one man adaptation of Shakespeare's classic play. Robb toured extensively with the show playing the music live during the performance. The collaboration proved highly successful and led to Robb and Nick co-founding the award winning Maverick Theatre. Over the years Robb has scored many productions for Maverick including Hamlet - Horatio's Tale, A Ghost Of A Chance, Birmingham People's Company production of Henry V and Hancock's Finest Hour. Robb's reputation for being able to compose and arrange to tight deadlines led to regular work as a composer for TV advertising and documentaries.
Robb has now returned to his native Cornwall where he lives with his wife Natalie, children Jamie and Lauren and a scruffy Jack Russell called Harry. Robb divides his time between composing and arranging music, multimedia design and running the award winning Iconik Photography with Natalie.

CHARLES DICKENS - Author
Charles Dickens was born in 1812, in Portsmouth, England. In 1822, the Dickens family moved to Camden Town, a poor neighborhood in London as the family'’s financial situation had grown dire. His father, John Dickens was sent to prison for debt in 1824, when Charles was 12 years old. Charles was forced to leave school to help support his family by working at a run-down, rodent-ridden boot-blacking factory alongside the Thames. He earning six shillings a week labeling pots of “blacking” - a substance used to clean fireplaces. Dickens saw this as the moment he said goodbye to his youthful innocence, wondering how he could be so easily cast away at such a young age, abandoned and betrayed by the adults who were supposed to take care of him - sentiments which became a recurring theme in his writing. He started writing when he had to drop out of school to work as an office boy to contribute again to his family’s income but he was soon reporting for two major London newspapers. In 1833, he met Catherine Hogarth (Kate), whom he soon married and had 10 children. Dickens also started publishing Bentley's Miscellany Monthly in which he serialised his first novel, Oliver Twist. The novel was extremely well received in both England and America where dedicated readers of Oliver Twist eagerly anticipated each monthly instalment. From 1838 to 1841, he published The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit and A Christmas Carol. In 1842, Dickens embarked on his first US tour and became an instant celebrity. His 75 readings netted an estimated $95,000, which, in the Victorian era, amounted to approximately $2 million in current U.S. dollars. From 1849 to 1850, Dickens worked on David Copperfield, his personal favourite work. During the 1850s, Dickens suffered the deaths of his daughter and father and, in 1858 separated acrimoniously from his wife of 35 years and took up with a young actress named Ellen "Nelly" Ternan... but he was very careful about leaving any hard evidence of this relationship. His novels also began to express a darkened world view: Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1861), which is widely considered to be his greatest literary accomplishment. A few years later, Dickens produced Our Mutual Friend (1864) In 1865, Dickens was in a train accident from which he never fully recovered, though he continued to tour until shortly before his death. After suffering a stroke, Dickens died at age 58 on June 9, 1870 at his country home in Kent, and was buried in Poet’s' Corner at Westminster Abbey. At the time of his death, his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was unfinished.

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