Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby takes a new twist

Written by Charles Dickens and staged by David Edgar in 1982, the play "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" has come full circle. David Edgar has cut his own nine hour long play into two distinct but easily understandable parts. His original play was a Tony award winner. This edition is essentially a trimming exercise in which the original play has lost a few scenes and musical numbers although it has not lost its original entertainment value. However, the play has been revived for the Chichester Theatre Festival and will be going to Toronto in February 2008.

In a stark change from the old cast, this new version is being performed by an extremely talented cast of 27 with many of them playing more roles than one. The play talks about a young man finding his way in the world in more often than not pitiless and cold 19th century England. As in the original, the directors Philip Franks and Jonathan Church compile this new epic with fast moving sequences with the character-narrations preceding the scenes.

With Mark Jonathan's lighting and Matt McKenzie's sound in confluence with the aesthetic atmosphere of Simon Higlett creating the visuals and effects, the characters’ overlapping dialogues are never lost on the audience. The portrayal of the period that had underlined cruelty with retention of optimistic sentimentality is of prime importance and has been dealt with beautifully.

Nicholas, played by Daniel Weyman, loses his father and takes up the reins of responsibility of his family amidst poverty. His sister Kate, played by Hannah Yelland, and his mother, become unscrupulous and send for their well-to-do uncle Ralph, played by David Yelland, for help and he in turn sends Nicholas up north to work in a squalid school while he also forces Kate to work as a seamstress. While Nicholas does his job well, he encounters a tasteless operation in school and adopts Smike, played by David Dawson, along with whom he runs away and joins a traveling theatre. The reason for running away is the cruelty of the school principal Mr. Squeers, played by Pip Donaghy.

While the play revolves around all characters equally, the colourful Dickens characters have been portrayed with requisite character and the play also involves a lot of lechery, larceny and scheming where the uncle tries to acquire the inheritance money. All in all, all characters do well but special mention goes to Smike (David Dawson) and the polished villain that is David Yelland. Richard Bremmer also portrays the knuckle cracking clerk Newman Noggs beautifully.

Each part is of three hours thus cutting out around 33% of the original play. The first part inculcates more fun due to the funny spoof of “Romeo and Juliet” at its end. I suppose Shakespeare can endure anything, as can Charles Dickens.

For those who don’t like monotony, this could yet be the chance of a lifetime to experience "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby".