Review Details
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«In his preview piece on Chichester's revival of Nicholas Nickleby, my colleague Jasper Rees wrote that "people who rhapsodise about long-gone productions should on the whole be taken out and shot".
He's right, and I still feel a touch guilty about writing a pedantic compare-and-contract review of Carousel, in relation to Nicholas Hytner's celebrated staging at the NT in the early '90s.
The biggest compliment I can pay this superb two-part production of Nicholas Nickleby is that though I have vivid memories of the RSC's legendary 1980 staging of Dickens's novel, this rare revival never feels like second best. Indeed, I think David Edgar's edited adaptation benefits from the shorter running time - about six and a half hours, compared with eight and a half - and the sleeker narrative.
Originally, 39 performers played 123 parts. Here 23 tackle just under 100, and once again the whole show feels like a glorious celebration of ensemble acting. Better yet, with intervals and a meal break, it doesn't feel a moment too long, and this tremendous production by Jonathan Church and Philip Franks was deservedly greeted by a spontaneous standing ovation.
Historically I suspect this will be seen as the moment when the troubled Chichester Festival spectacularly recovered its confidence and reconnected with its audience.
A good deal of the credit, of course, belongs to Dickens, that most theatrical, and theatrically savvy, of novelists. Edgar's adaptation wisely retains a good deal of his muscular descriptive tone of voice, and again and again watching this show I was reminded of Dryden's remark about Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Here, too, is God's plenty.
The compelling story ranges from the decadent aristocracy to the desperate dispossessed, from inner-city deprivation to the peace of rural Devon, from dreadful suffering to the most intense happiness. The writing - melodramatic, heartfelt, and blessed with a generosity of spirit that is unafraid of sentimentality - moves within minutes from humour to horror, from high drama to low cunning, from heroes to villains. And the superb ensemble catches every shift in mood and meaning.
Throughout, the show is blessed with the energy that comes from directors and actors who know they are on to a winner and are relishing every second of an extraordinarily rich and diverting text. If you had to choose, I suppose part one is the stronger of the pair. There's the thrillingly horrific evocation of Dotheboys Hall and the beautifully affectionate pastiche of the theatre as Nickleby and Smike join the Crummles company and perform in a deliriously funny production of Romeo and Juliet, complete with preposterous happy ending. But in part two, the plot really begins to bite, and you need to see both parts in order to appreciate the full glory of the show and the qualified joy of the conclusion.
Simon Higlett has come up with an attractive higgledy-piggledy 19th-century London design, Stephen Oliver's music, ranging from hymns to parlour ballads is deligfhtful, and there isn't a weak link in the acting ensemble.
Nickleby might easily seem a bland hero, but Daniel Weyman plays him with an open-countenanced ardour and impetuosity that is entirely winning. Hannah Yelland movingly captures the sexual vulnerability and suffering of his beloved sister, Kate, while Leigh Lawson almost makes you understand why Uncle Ralph is so vile.
But it is the eccentrics and the grotesques that steal the show. Pip Donaghy is a truly terrifying Wackford Squeers, yet also shines as a drunken actor laddie in a dreadful ginger wig and as the venomous Sir Mulberry Hawk. Bernard Lloyd is everything a lovable actor-manager should be as Vincent Crummles, John Ramm is a marvellously odd, creaky-voiced and endearing Newman Noggs. Zoe Waites offers superb value in several key roles, from a grotesque Fanny Squeers to a hilariously affected actress, with Waites sending up her own old role of Juliet something rotten. And David Dawson breaks your heart as the damaged Smike.
It's wonderful to see Chichester triumphantly firing on all cylinders with this great company-building show. A West End transfer must surely be on the cards, but Sussex is the place to catch it.»
- Charles Spencer - The Daily Telegraph
