what the Dickens

I went last night to see Miriam Margolyes' show show about Dickens' women at the Colchester Institute.  The good news is that it was a hoot, and the bad news that the UK tour is nearly over.  You can still catch her at Lincoln, Goostry, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Windermere and Cardiff, and after that you will have to go to Massachusetts.

I have an ambivalent view of Dickens.  His private life was really quite unpleasant, and some of the women in his books make Violet Elizabeth Bott look like an emancipated militant feminist.  His novels hold a sort of glutinous fascination.  But I am a fan of Miriam Margolyes, and thought that her account of the death of Dora would have to be worth hearing.

We did not get the death of Dora, alas.  Dora is a particular favourite in the cardunculus household, her cry that Gyp must have a mutton chop or he will die having entered common usage, each time one of the cats is sitting about looking particularly pathetic until it gets something special to eat.  However, we did get Oscar Wilde's verdict on the death of Little Nell ('One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing') and a brisk summary of Dickens' many practically pre-pubescent, sweet, docile and witless heroines.  I hadn't realised there were so many, not having read all of the books.  As Ms Margolyes said, she found them rather icky.

Dickens' fixation on seventeen year old girls stemmed at least in part from tragedy, as his seventeen year old sister-in-law died suddenly in front of him while climbing the stairs after a night at the theatre.  Dickens was very fond of his young in-law, and later of a seventeen year old actress, and his other sister-in-law who came to keep house for the family, while being very horrid to his wife.  I knew that bit from various R4 plays and documentaries.  He was deeply smitten by his first love, who rejected him, a fact he never got over, but then as Miriam Margolyes said, Dickens never got over anything that happened to him.

Miriam Margolyes is a brilliant character actress, and her Mrs Gamp, Mrs Micawber, workhouse matron whose name I've forgotten and beadle (she plays the male parts, too, where required) were very funny, and the serious passages she read were utterly gripping.  By the end of it I was even thinking I might go back to some of the books, or try one or two of them that I hadn't read, which is presumably the reaction Ms Margolyes hoped for.

My only gripe was that the complete lack of signs to the theatre at the Colchester Institute, so that before the show bewildered would-be theatre goers were wandering around in small circles in the car park asking each other if they knew where it was, and the fact that once I did find the auditorium, the air conditioning was stuck full on, and by the time the second half approached its conclusion we were all feeling rather chilly.  The sight lines were good from where we were sitting (my friend had been there before and knew which the best rows were) though the chairs were hard, and my companion who has back problems was wriggling in her seat by the end.  But it was a good evening.