Letters to the Beloved, the tale of Mrs. Charles Dickens, is the latest original drama from Clare Stearns, artistic director of Perilous Mouths Theatre. Through music, physical theatre and the actual words of the main protagonists, the play investigates the life of Catherine Hogarth Dickens, the wife of the great Victorian writer Charles Dickens. The young Mrs. Dickens (Kate) talks to her older self (Catherine), in an attempt to understand why, after 20 years of marriage and ten children, her husband has decided to obliterate her (his beloved) from his life, leaving her with only faded memories and an enormous bag of letters.
Thirty years later her daughter, Katey Perugini, ashamed and embarrassed by her parents, is determined to destroy the letters. But she hasn’t bargained on the persuasive powers of her best friend, the playwright G.B. Shaw, who is just as determined that she should face her own demons.