Click here for our video interview with Miriam MargolyesKEY POINTS:
The one-person show is usually born of economic necessity, but with Miriam Margolyes' enthusiastic exploration of Dickens' women, the form is perfectly suited to the theme.
As she embodies a dizzying parade of identities from Dickens' life and fiction, Margolyes gives a strong sense of the creative process by which Dickens gave birth to the grotesque and bizarre characters who populate his novels.
Her passion for Dickens' writing is balanced by a clearsighted and distinctly unflattering portrait of Dickens the man. It drives home the by now commonplace observation that great and compassionate artists are seldom great and compassionate human beings.
The show mercilessly dissects Dickens' disturbing relationships with women.
After an ironic commentary on the author's "icky" obsession with 17-year-old girls, Margolyes details Dickens' brutal treatment of his long-suffering wife, who gave birth to 12 children only to be publicly compared to a donkey and cast aside for a 17-year-old actress.
But such material is balanced by a moving account of the how the young Dickens was scarred by the memory of his mother insisting that he should continue working at a shoe-blackening factory while his sister was studying at a musical academy.
Carefully chosen excerpts from a broad range of Dickens' writing show how these real life experiences found their way into his novels.
Though the significance of this kind of literary detective work is put in perspective by a telling description of Dickens' encounter with a dwarf chiropodist, who objected to the way she was portrayed in David Copperfield.
Dickens responded to her objections by writing a more realistic portrayal of the woman that was so dull Margolyes declined to present it.
Her performance is a virtuoso display of theatrical skill and vocal prowess. Her ability to make lightening-quick character transformations is highlighted by a hilarious enactment of a seduction scene from Oliver Twist in which subtle gesture and facial expressions signify the character changes without a word being spoken. Margolyes has the audience spellbound as she describes Miss Havisham in her bridal chamber and she finds a poignant echo of this scene in a monologue from Bleak House in which the eccentric Miss Flite is waiting in vain for a judgment from the Chancery Courts.
As Margolyes solemnly intones the names of the caged birds who have died while Miss Flite awaits the ruling we get a brilliant encapsulation of Dickens' art, with humour and pathos mingling with the extremes of hope and despair.
The only sour note in a thoroughly entertaining evening comes from the dilapidated state of the Concert Chamber, which resembles one of Dickens' neglected orphans.
The chamber has enormous potential as a much needed medium-size venue for live theatre.
