★★★★
As soon as Margolyes takes to the stage, resplendent in her kimono and glitzy jewels, the audience erupts in applause. She’s beyond a national treasure. Yet, for Miriam, it’s acting that is her main craft, and that infused with her love of Dickens means she has the opportunity to bring many of the writer’s characters to life.
Margolyes evokes Fagin, Scrooge, Mr Bumble and Miss Haversham with such full-throated embodiment, it’s a glorious tour-de-force. It has a strange reverberation, as Dicken’s himself would tour reading from his novels with the same eccentric vigour. Yet with two centuries separating them, she achieves many of Dicken’s most important themes; poverty, class and the love of women, in a very short space of time.
Sadly, it’s over all too soon, and Miriam sits down to a Q&A. This is barely about Dickens, and moves into familiar anecdotes, which we have heard many times before, but are delightful to hear. I feel like Margolyes has become trapped by her autumnal raconteur status. She is a phenomenal actor and a great authority on Dickens, yet we get to hear the ‘Soldier getting wanked off’ another time. I wonder if Miriam minds? She is so kind and loving, perhaps she feels ‘give them what they want’. The Pleasance at the EICC were a seemingly Daily Mail crowd, odd considering Miriam is vocal about her advocacy and solidarity for the Palestinian people, left-wing credentials and even her ability to learn about LGBTQ+ lives and talk positively about some of the most marginalised of communities. People walked out – but she didn’t care. She is always herself, completely her own woman.
Miriam Margolyes & Dickens: The Best Bits is on at Pleasance at the EICC till August 12th
