Getting ready for Twelfth Night at Chiswick House

Charlie Wood, founder of Underbelly (L) designer Adrian Lillie, and Charlotte Lloyd Webber

Opening Chiswick House to the public at Christmas for the first time

Preparations are under way at Chiswick House for a Christmas spectacular – the events company Underbelly is installing a ‘theatrical festive experience’ based on the traditional celebration of Twelfth Night – opening the house to the public at Christmas for the first time ever.

The Chiswick Calendar spoke to the founder and director of Underbelly Charlie Wood, and the principal artistic designer Charlotte Lloyd Webber.

“I live in York”, Charlie told me, “but I used to live in west London, and I know Chiswick House well. I admired Castle Howard’s Christmas celebration – it’s an amazing event which brings the house to life at a time when it should be celebrated”.

Images from the 2019 Christmas Masquerade at Castle Howard, inspired by the Venetian and Italianate influences already present in the interior design, architecture and art collections of Castle Howard; CLW Event Design

Like a doll’s house version of Castle Howard

Christmas at Castle Howard is designed by Charlotte’s company CLW Event Design. She and Charlie met at a dinner there, and the idea of doing something similar at Chiswick House was hatched.

“It’s like a doll’s house version of it”, says Charlotte.

“I used to live in Chiswick, so I know it really well. Georgiana [Duchess of Devonshire, 1757 – 1806] was quite a character, and I am sympathetic to any woman who survived any period in history before ours. The conceit is that Georgiana is throwing an exclusive Twelfth Night party”.

And we are invited.

Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club; Underbelly

Creators of festivals and fun

Charlie and Charlotte have an exceptional track record in putting together spectacular shows.

Charlie started Underbelly 25 years ago at the Edinburgh Festival and the company has grown into one that now has a reputation for specialising in ground-breaking theatrical productions and the creation of city-centre cultural events and festivals across the UK, USA and Asia.

They produce “anything that is live”, Charlie told The Chiswick Calendar. Currently in London that includes the Olivier Award winning Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club and the Underbelly Boulevard venue in Soho, and an open-air ice rink in Leicester Square, which they just opened on Friday.

Skate Leicester Square; Underbelly

Other recent productions include Macbeth alongside Wessex Grove starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, The McOnie Company’s Nutcracker at the Tuff Nutt Jazz Club at Southbank Centre, and a tour of Tweedy’s Massive Circus on a UK-wide tour starting at The RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon last year.

Charlotte used to run the Oxford Shakespeare Company. Her design company has carved out a niche delivering extraordinary installations and live events at Heritage properties across the UK.

CLW Event Design

The first reaction of a heritage site to an approach for an event? “No”

Current projects include Christmas 2025 installations at Castle Howard, Kensington Palace, Bamburgh Castle, Beaulieu Palace House, Polesden Lacey House as well as Chiswick.

I wondered how she persuaded the owners of heritage properties, notoriously precious about their buildings, to let them in and take over the place.

“I expect a ‘no’, and then a ‘maybe’. It’s a trust exercise”.

Organisations such as English Heritage have come to trust that she and her team will be respectful of the heritage and what they create will fit in tastefully. She is “passionate about heritage”, she says, and the bottom line is that the income her shows bring in is “essential revenue for them”.

The lengths they go to in order to placate the protectors of our heritage are quite extraordinary. Any wood being brought into Kensington Palace for the Christmas show has to been stored in a freezer for a couple of weeks first. It would not do to introduce beetles.

Chiswick House; photograph Andre Pattenden

So what can we expect at Chiswick House?

“We work with the architecture and the colour palettes to create something you can only see in that place. Chiswick House has incredible colour and design. and the aim is to enhance the house, not hide it”.

Twelfth Night, on the fifth of January, was the height of the Christmas celebration in Georgian times. Unlike today, when Christmas Day is the main event, 25 December is only day one of the celebrations.

Twelfth Night is “the apogee of fun and colour”, she says.

“We have combined the idea of Twelfth Night with the carol written in 1780, The Twelve Days of Christmas, so it will be very familiar to everybody. When you go round you will see the party guests in their bespoke frocks”.

She is making the most of the house’s history, and loves that it was designed as a party house, “to show off and entertain.

“This will be the first time in hundreds of years that the house will be used for that again at Christmas”.

CLW Event Design

Georgiana’s dinner table, a mouse trail and a Christmas grotto for children, and the Queen of Misrule

Working with specialist prop makers and costume makers, they are creating a series of tableaux to illustrate the verses of the carol in order as the visitor sees them, finishing with the dinner itself in the Lower Tribune – an octagonal room with eight Tuscan columns positioned around its perimeter.

They have cut a 12-sided table for Georgiana and her eleven guests, with a special cake as the centre piece. Plate from a design by De Gournay – ‘the internationally acclaimed purveyor of exquisite hand-painted wallpaper and porcelain’.

“Banquets were all about the sweets – there are plenty of sugared almonds and marchpane”, (an older version of the modern marzipan).

CLW Event Design

While the adults are admiring the detail of the costumes and decoration, children will be able to follow a mouse’s trail around the house, and there will be a Christmas grotto.

There will also be a Queen of Misrule outside – a 14 foot statue with an enormous dress made from and decorated with objects from Chiswick House Gardens.

“It is an absolute honour to be working with Charlotte at Chiswick House”, said Charlie. “It will be a special experience for children and young families that is unique to west London and we hope it is the beginning of a lovely partnership for the future”.

The Twelfth Night of Christmas will be open to the public on Friday 21 November.

Book tickets: The Twelfth Night of Christmas

Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar