Dickens' Women

Media - Videos and Reviews

Miriam's First Web Diary

Miriam on Enough Rope with Andrew Denton

Miriam in her Wicked Dressing Room

Miriam talks about coming to Australia and New Zealand.

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Late Night Live

Miriam appeared on ABC Late Night Live on September 10. To listen to the podcast click here

Reviews

A Dickens of a time promised
review
By Cameron Woodhead

I RECENTLY listened to an audio-book of Miriam Margolyes reading Oliver Twist. Her speaking voice was so soothing and beautifully inflected, it was like sitting by an enchanted stream. But the real magic came with the dialogue, when Margolyes burst into character, and the men, women and children of the novel - the swinish beadles, dying mothers and tremulous orphans - sprang fully formed into the imagination.

Margolyes (pictured) is an extraordinary character actress. Her one-woman show, Dickens' Women, is a tribute both to her infectious passion for Dickens' work and her astonishing versatility as a performer.

The show elegantly combines character sketches, short readings, biographical material and mordant commentary. Margolyes portrays characters from Dickens' lesser known fiction as well as the classics, with selections made partly on biographical significance - some of Dickens' characters were based on people he knew in life - and partly at Margolyes' (often considerable) pleasure.

Margolyes enters as Mrs Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit, a sodden nurse who specialises in laying out corpses for burial. And it's soon clear that Margolyes has a special affinity for Dickens' grotesques, rendering his florid satires of human frailty with a full measure of hilarity, and a dash of poignancy when required.

Amazingly, her compelling vocal characterisations are matched in facial expression and physical gesture. She can contort her features into any kind of caricature. One memorable scene from Oliver Twist, when Mr Bumble proposes to his paramour, sees Margolyes switch from wide-lipped lust to squinting coquettishness at lightning speed.

But it isn't just the comedy that makes Dickens' Women worth seeing. There are staggering dramatic portraits. As the lesbian Miss Wade from Little Dorrit, Margolyes aches with tormented love and barely controlled regret. As Miss Flight, the ageing spinster from Bleak House, she transforms from a slightly potty old duck into a softly spoken Cassandra, as she recounts the increasingly unpleasant names of her birds.

Dickens' Women is a tour de force. When she appears as herself, Margolyes sparkles with intelligence and enthusiasm and is full of witty erudition about Dickens' life and work. And when she inhabits his characters, you'd swear they lived and breathed in front of you.

review
By Chris Boyd

DICKENS' WOMEN
Where: Playhouse, Thursday. Also Frankston Arts Centre, October 9-10

CHARLES Dickens wrote two kinds of women: the innocent and the grotesque. Bland young angels and creepy, painted, psychotic, blowzy harridans.
The innocents, pretty much, are indistinguishable. They're all 17 and utterly nice. Dream girls. An old man's fantasy. The grotesques, by contrast, are unique. Each has a pathology all of her own.
There's no prize for guessing which are more fun to play, especially for a character actor of the calibre of Miriam Margolyes. They're also much more fun to watch.
So, first and foremost, Dickens's Women is a freak show. It strings together scenes from various novels: monologues, little dramas and a couple of self-contained readings from a lectern, a replica of Dickens' own . . . which he designed himself.
As much as Margolyes loves Dickens' novels, she's the first to admit his ingenues are a little bit ``icky'' and that the man was a misogynist pig.
He once likened his wife to a donkey before cruelly dumping her for a woman almost 30 years younger than himself.
In the course of two hours, Margolyes neatly sketches his life story and places him on the analyst's couch. Tales from his life are then illustrated by the scenes that those events inspired in his novels.
It's all immense fun, even if you're unfamiliar with the novels. There's an earthiness and a cleverness that feeds into Margolyes's acting.
She can pull faces and pull off dozens of voices, but there's so much more to her and her work. There's a creative spirit, a restlessness which helps keep a well-drilled work fresh and utterly live.
How lucky we are this extraordinary actor now calls Australia home.

Stage chameleon
By CATHERINE LAMBERT

MIRIAM Margolyes is one of those rare modern actors because she is a genuine chameleon.
Effortlessly hopping between the characters in Charles Dickens' writings -- mostly women -- she is an actor of great agility.
She always manages to leave a strong impact in whatever medium and in whatever sized role because of her superb grasp of nuance. It all begins with the voice and she is definitely the mistress of her instrument, gliding into myriad personalities.
Although Margolyes may be best known for her comic sense and endearing cuteness, she can also draw a tear. She is moving, indeed quite haunting, as Miss Havisham and declaring Miss Flite from Bleak House as Dickens' most tender portrait, she plays her full compassion and sensitivity.
But she is equally sensitive with the funnier portraits, celebrating the human condition with a Dickensian relish. She declares that she loves playing the fireside scene from Oliver Twist, switching from lecherous Mr Bumble to opportunistic Mrs Corney with building enthusiasm.
Her life-long love of literature and Charles Dickens is evident in her acting. She appreciates the words and carries them a step further into the visual world so vividly created by Dickens.
Aside from bringing the characters to life on stage, she also gives us a sense of Dickens as a complex and flawed man who, in knowing cruelty knew how to inflict it, particularly towards his wife, Catherine Hogart, the mother to his 12 children.
This is theatre at its most enriching. It may not be a light and sound show, though John Martin plays wonderfully discreet mood piano, but it is theatre of words and imagination which is really at the heart of all great performance.