Dickens
A Christmas Carol, Noël Coward TheatreThursday, 10 December 2015
Is Jim Broadbent Britain’s best-loved actor? The slate of screen roles he’s accumulated over the years – this Christmas Carol is his return to theatre after a decade away – has surely given him a very special quality in the nation's consciousness, a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Roger ReesSunday, 12 July 2015
Roger Rees, whose death at the age of 71 was announced yesterday, never intended to act. He trained at the Slade and made extra money painting theatrical scenery. One day a director asked if he’d like to act, and he laid down his brush. The second... Read more... |
The Invisible WomanThursday, 06 February 2014
Delve into the personal life of Charles Dickens and she emerges, revealing another side of an author whose stories seem so wholesome. According to The Invisible Woman author Claire Tomalin, Ralph Fiennes’ film about Charles Dickens’ secret mistress... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Biographer Claire Tomalin on Charles DickensMonday, 03 February 2014
The tally of Charles Dickens’s biographers grows ever closer to 100. The English language’s most celebrated novelist repays repeated study, of course, because both his life and his work are so remarkably copious: the novels, the journals, the... Read more... |
Great Expectations, Bristol Old VicSaturday, 05 October 2013
Neil Bartlett, as he has demonstrated in his earlier Dickens adaptations of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, knows how to make gripping theatre out of a complex work of fiction. His Great Expectations rattles through the twists and turns of Pip’s... Read more... |
A Tale of Two Cities, King's Head TheatreSaturday, 28 September 2013
The opening of Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities is among the most famous ever written: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…". If the publicity for this stage... Read more... |
Great Expectations, Vaudeville TheatreSaturday, 09 February 2013
There’s nothing novel about novel-adaptations on stage. We’ve seen every classic from Pride and Prejudice to Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Woman in White (and The Woman in Black) get the full theatrical treatment, and I’m not sure any have ended up... Read more... |
Great ExpectationsWednesday, 28 November 2012
One has low expectations of Great Expectations. As the Dickens bicentenary draws to a close with yet another version, young Pip must once again come to the aid of the convict Magwitch, once again be raised up from apprentice blacksmith to... Read more... |
Nick Nickleby, BBC OneMonday, 05 November 2012
No Dickens novel seems to come around the block more often than The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, possibly excepting Great Expectations, which is taking a bow on both big screen and small for the bicentenary year. Relatively recent... Read more... |
Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, British LibraryMonday, 14 May 2012
Wordsworth would not be happy. The bard of Grasmere once wrote a poem deploring the new-fangled habit of tourists wandering about the lakes with a book in hand. “A practice very common,” he harrumphed, before crossing out the whole poem. The... Read more... |
DVD: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby/ The Old Curiosity ShopFriday, 04 May 2012
Celebrations of Dickens’ bicentenary will soon be elbowed aside by the Olympics, Jubilee and European Football Championships. Amidst all that flag-waving, these two mid-20th century Dickens films convey a love for England’s landscape and character... Read more... |
Fiennes shoots himself as DickensWednesday, 25 April 2012The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens has seen the publication of Claire Tomalin’s biography, but cinema is reverting to her earlier book The Invisible Woman to mark the bicentenary. The book is the biography of Nelly Ternan, the... Read more... |
