Photo Flash: First Look at Rehearsal for A CHRISTMAS CAROL at Windsor Castle

This December, for the first time, an immersive Christmas performance will be staged in the magnificent State Apartments at Windsor Castle.

Presented by theatre company Watch Your Head, the family-friendly evening performances of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol will take place in the Castle's two largest rooms, where the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret performed Christmas pantomimes during the Second World War.

The full cast will include John Kay Steel as Jacob Marley, Edward Halsted as Ebenezer Scrooge, Eleanor Brown as Belle, Charlie Ward as Tiny Tim, Oliver Hamilton as Fred, Michelle Hodgson as Mrs Cratchit, Molly Hanson as Belinda and Marlon Moore as
Bob Cratchit.

Check out photos from rehearsals below!

Tailor-made for Windsor Castle and using Dickens's own words from his public readings of the classic tale, the production will feature live music and immersive elements, transporting the audience into a Victorian Christmas. Visitors will accompany Ebenezer Scrooge from the Castle gates to the Waterloo Chamber, where Jacob Marley awaits to conjure his haunting dreams of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. The cast of actors and musicians performing all around will transform the colossal space into Dickensian London, before the audience follows Scrooge into St George's Hall to celebrate his new-found festive spirit beneath the Castle's spectacular Christmas tree.

Monarchs have been celebrating Christmas at Windsor Castle since the 12th century, but it was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who introduced many of the Christmas traditions that we know today. Prince Albert is credited with popularising the German tradition of Christmas trees while enjoying the festive season at the Castle, and the Queen and Prince Albert were often seen ice skating and enjoying winter sleigh rides in the Castle grounds.

It was during this period that Dickens first published A Christmas Carol in 1843, and it has remained a festive classic ever since. The work can be seen in miniature in the library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House, built in the early 1920s as a perfect replica of an aristocratic Edwardian residence and housed ever since at Windsor Castle.

Their third collaboration with Royal Collection Trust, Watch Your Head's latest production follows their recently staged immersive performances of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Castle's Moat Garden.

A Christmas Carol is directed by Sasha McMurray with an original score by Joseph Reuben, costume design by Annina Pfuel, choreography by Edwin Ray, puppetry design by Jeremy Hamway-Bidgood and lighting design by Matt Cater.

Photo Credit: Royal Collection Trust