Review Details
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«NICKELEBY'S RETURNED IN PERFECT NICK Abundant theatricality; lashings of brutality and sentimentality; and a forceful lesson in getting on your metaphorical bike and the importance of decency and compassion in a world filled with corrupt and thoroughly vile people. Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens's novel stuffed with sound Victorian values, might have been written specially for the good burghers of Chichester In fact, this is the first revival of David Edgar's version of the novel which, in the vivid staging of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Eighties, became a landmark, demonstrating narrative theatre at its best. Jonathan Church and Philip Franks's production has lost a couple of hours and, occasionally, a vital bit of plot, but none of its gusto and invention. It is simply staged against a versatile set of panels, ropes and railings that manages to evoke both the slummy and grand exteriors in town and country. While some ghosts from the previous production (Roger Rees's Nicholas and Edward Petherbridge's Newman Noggs) inevitable hover they are always benignly smiling over a crack company capable of several luminous little cameos as well as searching characterisation and superb ensemble acting. There are too many to mention, but Pip Donaghy is a particularly frighteningly florid and predatory Mulberry Hawk, forever stalking Hannah Yelland's golden-haired, demure Kaye Nickleby; Dilys Laye as Miss La Creevey, a woman of little importance but a sweet one, has the voice of a songbird; Zoe Waites is an alarmingly brattish Fanny Squeers and a marvellous husky Miss Snevellicci; Bernard Lloyd is a wonderful old thesp as Vincent Crummles; Veronica Roberts is hugely entertaining as his redoubtable wife; and David Dawson is touching as the crippled urchin Smike. For me, the highlight comes with Crummles's riotous staging of Romeo and Juliet when, it seems, Dickens, Shakespeare and Edgar are contributing evenly to a scene of glorious theatricality."
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- Georgina Brown - Mail on Sunday
