Charles Dickens’
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
adapted by John Mortimer

By popular demand, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, adapted by John Mortimer, returns to the Gate this festive season from 26^th November.

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 after reading a Parliamentary Report on child poverty depicting the awful conditions under which the vast majority of the working class laboured. The moment the book went on sale, its first print run of 6,000 copies sold out, as did the second and third printings. Almost immediately stage adaptations started to be mounted and by February 1844, three months after publication, there were eight productions running simultaneously. He himself chose it for the first of his public readings. When he came to Dublin in 1858 to read in the Round Room of the Rotunda Hospital, the performances were so popular that hundreds tried to gain admission and queues were so deep in O'Connell Street that the writer had to fight his way from the hotel to the venue.