Charles Dickens always had a passion for theatre and performance and, had he not become a popular writer, he could well have been a popular actor. His literary success began in 1836 with the publication of the Pickwick Papers and the creation of the character Sam Weller.
Dickens’s highly auditory prose, emotional and comic, makes it easy to adapt his novels for the stage. There were many pirated versions in the Victorian era, often staged before their serialisation had even finished.
In 1853, Dickens began a new career. He gave dramatized readings of his works which were hugely popular with audiences, earning him more money than he did from his novels. He made more money performing than William Charles Macready, the most popular actor of his day. The intensity of Dickens’s rendering of the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist had audiences fainting.
Eddie Izzard identifies as a trans-woman these days but the performance of Great Expectations, vocally and physically, remains very masculine. The solo show, a fantastic feat of memory and talent, previewed in the UK, then premièred in New York and is now back in London for six weeks.
Izzard is wearing period costume: black jacket, high boots with heels, ruffled Regency shirt, plus scarlet lips and varnished nails. What she does on stage is in no way like the readings Emlyn Williams gave in the 1950s.
One of my earliest theatre memories is seeing Williams in his one-man show playing Charles Dickens giving dramatized readings of his works whilst standing at a remake of the lectern Dickens had used. Williams, made up to look like the author, was superb.
For those that have not done so already, I would strongly recommend the 1946 David Lean film starring John Mills. There are also memorable performances by Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham, Finlay Currie as Magwitch, Francis L Sullivan as Jaggers and Bernard Miles as Joe Gargery. These characters, inevitably, came more vividly to life on screen than those you don’t see in this solo show on stage.
Eddie Izzard gives a flamboyant performance. She strides the stage, looking like the Izzard we all know, performing the story and talking with herself, exactly as she has always done in her rambling stand-up comedy routines with their extraordinary and hilarious flights of fancy and surreal conversations with animals. Izzard plays 19 characters here, interacting with each other, only with a change of voice, a shift of position and a comic gesture.
Izzard gives audiences but a taster of the novel. Theatregoers who have never read Great Expectations or seen David Lean's film adaptation might therefore have difficulties.
Eddie Izzard has indicated in interviews that she wants to perform Hamlet, the play, as her next solo.