Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

A Novel Concept

In the mid-1800s, Charles Dickens was likely the closest thing the world had to a “rock star,” as Middlebury playwright Gaen Murphree puts it. He was “probably the most famous artist of his era,” she says. And if the workshop readings of The Very Dickens at Town Hall Theater last summer are any indication, the English novelist’s celebrity hasn’t faded over the years. In Murphree’s one-man show, Midd actor Neil Flint Worden stars as Dickens, offering staged readings from David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby much as he would have done on his real-life 1867-8 American tour. At THT, says Worden, audiences were “screaming” with excitement. In reaction, this week’s performances at Lost Nation Theater’s Winterfest bring listeners even closer to the writer with personal, historically accurate anecdotes.