Margolyes and Dickens: The Best Bits seems confused about what it wants to be. Is it a one-woman performance in which Margolyes embodies some of Dickens’ most recognisable characters, or is it a talk show style Q&A about the actress herself? Somehow it is both, and though there is no denying that Margolyes has the capacity to be very funny, this is a disjointed 80 minutes that lacks self-definition.
Miriam Margolyes is a super-fan of Victorian novelist Charles Dickens, and her passion for the writer as she talks us through his oeuvre is engaging and charming. Accompanied by dramatised excerpts from iconic novels such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, we are drawn, however briefly, into the Dickensian world of crooks, drunkards and workhouses, all by one actress who breathes life into the characters through dynamic accents and gestures. Her Mrs. Gamp is particularly gleeful to watch, as she slurs her words and lolls about as the drunken midwife.
Moving to the second portion of the evening, the show transformed into a Q&A session with questions submitted by the audience via an onscreen QR code. Though this seemed an abrupt shift from the prior focus on Dickens, this real issue was that the questions chosen were bland and uncreative. Do we really need to hear from Margolyes about her experience on the set of the Harry Potter films? What followed were questions that were clearly an attempt to prod Margolyes to obscenities – but in reality, she was forced into regurgitating anecdotes already seen on The Graham Norton Show and it all felt rather uninspired. I see no reason why the questions could not have been at least tangentially related to the author who shares half of the show’s title, and whom Margolyes is clearly keen to talk about.
I really don’t know who the audience for this was. Dickens fans can expect an insufficient amount of material on the subject, which shouldn’t truly be a concern as I suspect that the entire crowd was there for Margolyes. But fans of the actress will have been familiar with the stories she shared which have widely circulated online. A better curated set of questions would have easily remedied this problem. Miriam Margolyes is unquestionably hilarious, but the latter half of Margolyes and Dickens: The Best Bits failed to showcase this.
Margolyes and Dickens: The Best Bits is on at 16:00 at Pleasance at EICC until August 15.
Buy tickets here
Press image by Paul Stewart provided by Impressive Pr.