Charles Dickens theme park to open in Kent

[trekz 7]

Great expectations? By Finlo Rohrer

BBC News Magazine

 

Will your children thrill to the words of the master?

 

A Charles Dickens theme park opens in Kent soon, promising an authentic taste of the novelist's Victorian world. But is it wrong to "Disney-fy" the nation's greatest author?

 

The great American amusement park pioneer, George C Tilyou, once said: "What attracts the crowd is the wearied mind's demand for relief in unconsidered muscular action."

 

So it's inevitable that Dickens World conjures a degree of scepticism among those not ready for a theme-park tribute to one of the most popular novelists in the English language.

 

Housed in a modern, aluminium-clad hangar on the Chatham Maritime estate in Kent, its creators promise a flavour of "dark, smoky, moody London, full of smells and mist".

 

Workmen are hard at it, creating the rickety backstreets and miasmatic waterways of urban, Victorian England. The overall effect is rather like Disney painted brown and plunged into twilight.

 

Its recreation of the world of Dickens is decked out in hand-painted, brick-effect plaster fascia and promises to smell just as his world would. It doesn't yet. Solvent aromas fill the nostrils as the building work continues, ahead of the delayed opening at the end of May.

 

Dickens World is faithful to the London of the period in the same way that Disney's Cinderella Castle is faithful to gothic chateau architecture. Ish.

 

Visitors to the £62m, privately-funded attraction can sample the Great Expectations boat ride, themed around the escape of the convict Magwitch and featuring dyed-brown water.

 

Debtors' prisons

 

There's the Haunted House of Ebenezer Scrooge, Quilps Creek, Newgate Prison and the Britannia Music Hall, while children can sit in the Dotheboys Hall Victorian classroom and be shouted at by an angry beak.

 

And if you tire of the world of debtors' prisons and runaway prisoners, you can always pop next door to the Odeon multiplex.

 

Dickens spent part of his childhood in Chatham, while his father worked as a clerk in the Navy pay office at the dockyard. Nearby Rochester has always made hay of its Dickens connections. The man himself referred to his childhood stamping grounds as Dullborough.

 

"Most of us come from Dullborough who come from a country town," he wrote.

 

Chatham remains a microcosm of the world of the English provincial town. Lacking in purpose since the naval dockyards closed 20 years ago, it's turning to tourism as part of its efforts to avoid becoming yet another commuter dormitory town.

 

Dickens World was the dream of the now deceased Gerry O'Sullivan-Beare, a theme park designer who worked on Santa's World and the also-literary Andersen World, among others. Its backers hope to pull in 300,000 visitors a year.

 

Managing director Kevin Christie has a glint in his eye that only momentarily dims at suggestions that this experience is not 100% authentic Dickens.

 

"We think of the books as mostly about poverty and misery, but we tend to forget this was the great age of the Victorian supremacy - there were big things going on," he says.

 

'Ultimate showman'

 

"The Dickens Fellowship have been on board on a daily basis. Their passion for Dickens means Dickens World is going to have a focus of attention which pleases them.

 

"Everything we reproduce and say and do is faithful to some element of his life."

 

Those that fancy a drink in Dickens World can sup at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters bar. Gruel will not feature.

 

Dickens described "a tavern of dropsical appearance... long settled down into a state of hale infirmity" with "corpulent windows in diminishing piles". Not quite a branch of Harvester then.

 

Christie has a weary, rehearsed tone in his voice when dealing with the allegation of Disney-fication of the Dickens legacy.

 

"He was the ultimate showman. He was the populist. He wrote in soap form for newspapers. When his own career hit the rocks he took his show on the road, travelled up and down the country, reading his books off the stage. The short answer is he would have loved it.

 

"Somebody once said if Shakespeare was alive today he would write plays, if Dickens was alive today he would have written for TV. Every episode ends on a cliffhanger. He was a great story writer, he has got great characters."

 

But to the aficionados, Dickens is more than just an author. The word Dickensian refers not just to the novels, but also operates as a multi-purpose description of social blight. There are Dickensian slums and Dickensian conditions in jails and sweatshops.

 

Former Dickens Fellowship joint secretary Thelma Grove has worked as a consultant on the theme park. She is adamant it is the right path to take for an author who is as relevant today as he was 150 years ago.

 

"A lot of the social concerns are still a problem for us today, with these young people going around shooting each other," she says.

 

Grove delights in the international appeal of Dickens, with more branches of the fellowship in the US than UK and a Tokyo branch going strong since 1970. But there is also a certain quintessential Englishness in the writing of the master.

 

Dickens campaigned for factory workers

"You cannot imagine Mr Pickwick coming from any other nation, bumbling with good intentions that don't work out. People tend to feel a sort of proprietorial interest in Dickens."

 

Race equality chief Trevor Phillips caused a minor furore in 2004 when he said immigrants should try Dickens if they hoped to integrate.

 

"What we should be talking about is how we reach an integrated society, one in which people are equal under the law, where there are common values of democracy rather than violence, the common currency of the English language, honouring the culture of these islands, like Shakespeare and Dickens," he said.

 

Dr Peter D McDonald, English literature tutor at St Hugh's college, Oxford, worries that with theme parks, banknote appearances and English iconhood, the real meaning of Dickens is being lost.

 

"They are moves that can obscure aspects of Dickens maybe people don't really want to see, to tame and domesticate him.

 

"People want Dickens to represent some idea of Englishness. It is making him too domestic and homely. The humour is deeply cruel and vicious. He is a massively powerful and disturbing figure."

 

But English or global, amiable or cruel, it's likely the legend of Dickens can endure a little Disney-fication.

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I'm not so sure how this will work. I've visited the new Lincoln Presidential Museum with a modern museum look - to me some of it works and some doesnot.

 

What do you think about this idea and would you visit? (I would consider doing it, though it would definitely invole a special trip to England then to Kent.)

Edited April 16, 2007 by trekz

[Kor37 9]

I predict this park will be closed within a year....... :P

[Theunicornhunter 2]

Well, I just read over this - my opinion may change as I think about it but my initial reaction is that this is pathetic. Part of me says Dickens should be read - the rickety streets, opressive bosses, persevering characters don't need paint and plaster to be experienced. I worry people are losing the ability to read (read for pleasure and appreciate it)

 

On the other hand - I guess it is a precursor to the holodeck.

 

On the other, other hand (obviously some alien life form) there are a couple of places in Florida I'd like to visit - including a re-creation of a medieval fare. I have visited some "living history" parks and really enjoyed it so maybe there is a place for this.

[Lady Britannia 0]

It will work if kept tasteful and intellectual. If they try to introduce any Disney-esque tackiness and crap, then it won't work.