Written for Time Out
Simon Callow has built himself a tidy sideline as a Charles Dickens tribute act, so the great Victorian novelist's bicentenary has kept him busy. We've had the biography ('Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World'), the one-man 'Christmas Carol' (back soon) and now this revival of this effusive lecture about Dickens's life and work, written by Peter Ackroyd.
The script looks to locate Dickens in his books, flicking from biography to gobbets of his fiction, but gradually reversing that balance. After going a little doolally at 40, he increasingly resembles his oddball characters, until his famous reading tours eventually straighten out his head. Dickens, the frustrated actor who, at 20, missed a West End audition because of illness, finally gets his chance on stage.
Callow gets ample opportunity to showcase his talent for caricature, as the piece slides into shuffle mode. There's Miss Havisham, Mr Bumble, Cratchit and Copperfield; a different face and voice for each. The better you know the work, the more you'll get, but unfamiliarity isn't an obstacle.
However, technique can get in the way of communication. Callow is so intent on sculpting each word in sound, squeezing syllables out of his accordion lungs, that clarity sometimes drops out. Even so, his infatuation is infectious and leaves a flickering impulse to dive in to the books themselves.
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