Dickens
& Nelly, a New Musical.
Books/lyrics by Barbara Zinn Krieger; music by
Charlie Greenberg
In 1858, Charles Dickens’ affair with Nelly
Ternan, (the actress more than 25 years his junior), had become public enough
to compel Dickens to publish a denial:
“I most solemnly declare, then -- and this I do
both in my own name and in my wife's name -- that all the lately whispered rumors
touching the trouble, at which I have glanced, are abominably false. And
whosoever repeats one of them after this denial, will lie as willfully and as
foully as it is possible for any false witness to lie, before heaven and
earth".
In the new musical “Dickens
& Nelly”, this spirited defense of Dickens’ integrity and Nelly’s virtue is
dramatized during a confrontation in London’s Anatheum Club. Having mocked Dickens for trying to hide his
affair, authors, including hypocritical Willkie Collins (“I do as I please with both my
women”), Anthony Trollope, George Wills and William Makepeace Thackeray are
excoriated by an enraged Dickens. Dickens’
words soar in a new musical theater piece that understands there’s rarely as much heated
and continuous passion as there is in an illicit love affair.
Dickens is a control freak. He orchestrates the affair through selective
confidants and a mastering of train schedules. Exploiting his prodigious fame,
charm, and the vacuum created by an absent father figure, he seductively
isolates Nelly (the youngest of three sisters in a theatrical family), from her
siblings and mother. To protect his
reputation, he surreptitiously moves Nelly from location to location over a
period of 13 years, adopting an alias for them both.
But, Dickens loses
control. His wife discovers the affair,
Nelly becomes pregnant, and the train crashes - with both Dickens and Nelly onboard.
Ultimately, Nelly rejects
victimization and reinvents herself, while never compromising her past love for
Dickens. In fact, she is a survivor of a
love affair that didn’t publicly begin to see the light of day till the mid
1930s – 20 years after her death.
Dickens & Nelly will receive a
staged reading under the musical direction of Warren Helms
Location: Black Box Theater @ William
Paterson University in New Jersey.
Date: Sunday, April 19th
@6:00PM
Admission: Free
