Dickensblog

'Demon Copperhead' wins a Pulitzer

Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, an update of David Copperfield set in the Appalachians, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last week (sharing the honor with Trust by Hernan Diaz). I'm currently reading the novel and hope to have a review for you soon!

Thoughts on Hulu's 'Great Expectations,' episodes 5 and 6

This post will contain major spoilers, so I'll put the review under the cut.

'A Christmas Carol' earns three Tony nominations

This was the Jefferson Mays one-man Christmas Carol that ran on Broadway from November 2022 to January 2023. Congratulations to Dane Laffrey and Lucy Mackinnon, nominated for Best Scenic Design of a Play; Joshua D. Reid, nominated for Best Sound Design of a Play; and Ben Stanton, nominated for Best Lighting Design of a Play! The full list of nominations is here.

Rehearsal footage from Encores' 'Oliver!'

Playbill's YouTube channel has shared rehearsal clips of "Where Is Love?" and "Consider Yourself" from the upcoming New York City Center production, embedded below. And BroadwayWorld has photos from the rehearsal. The cast, led by Benjamin Pajak as Oliver and Julian Lerner as the Artful Dodger, looks great, and I envy you lucky people who get to see this onstage!

 

Thoughts on Hulu's 'Great Expectations,' episodes 3 and 4

A particular speech of Mr. Jaggers's from episode 3 neatly sums up this whole enterprise, and Steven Knight's whole approach to Dickens. When Pip asks why Jaggers has been made his guardian, Jaggers answers, "Because I am known to be evil. Celebrated for it. And your benefactor knows that in an evil place like London, attachment to virtue would be fatal."

In almost any other production, that might be conveying something like bitter sarcasm or world-weary lament or at least deliberate exaggeration. In this one, where there is no subtext, subtlety, or wit, and everything is to be taken at face value, there's no other way to hear it but as straightforward truth. It's so laughably on the nose that it put me in mind of an old joke from "Mystery Science Theater 3000," where an obviously villainous character arrived on the scene and one of the guys quipped, "Hi, I'm Bob Evil!"

The foggiest notion

The Dickens Museum has a new exhibition devoted to one of the most pervasive elements of Victorian London: fog. Items on display as part of "A Great and Dirty City: Dickens and the London Fog" include a first edition of Bleak House (with its famous opening description of "fog everywhere") and Dickens's own fire poker, in memory of the coal fires that did so much to produce the fog. The Spectator has an article about the exhibition here.

Thoughts on Hulu's 'Great Expectations,' episodes 1 and 2

Watching Steven Knight's Great Expectations, after having watched his A Christmas Carol a few years ago, has driven me relentlessly to one conclusion: Knight just doesn't like Dickens. At all. If Knight had been born hating Dickens and hated him more every day of his life, he couldn't have done him more dirty than he has.

Once again we have the characters twisted and distorted out of all recognition. Once again we have a woman put in a degrading sexual position by an older man (a relative, in this case). Once again we have Dickens's quicksilver words discarded for clunky, leaden attempts at dialogue, and his odd, fascinating quirks smoothed over, to be replaced with various vices and kinks. Even the music, by Keefus Ciancia, is grim and joyless. 

Hulu's 'Great Expectations': Reviews and articles

The first episode of the new BBC/FX Great Expectations is now available on Hulu. The Independent opines that, paradoxically, "the desire to sex up Victoriana" is "all very predictable." The Hollywood Reporter states, "What could have been a daring spin on a classic is transformed instead into a dreary slog," and CNN says, "The story ... grinds along sluggishly." According to The Evening Standard, "It’s not so much a dramatisation of Great Expectation[s], as a hollowing out of it in order to accommodate a very different story and almost unrecognisable characters." (Relatedly, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has an interesting piece at LitHub, with the marvelous title "The Wizardry of Boz," taking a look at how the various adaptations of Dickens have shaped our view of his work.)

But the piece that most got my attention was writer/producer Steven Knight's interview with TV Insider, in which Knight said, "[Dickens] can never go all the way into those dark places. So that’s what I tried to do." You can read my Twitter rant on that quote here. The gist of it is that I'm sick and tired of people claiming to have added qualities to Dickens that are already there, and that Dickens could out-dark Knight with one hand tied behind his back. Just because he wasn't explicit or gruesome doesn't mean he was too timid to explore or create haunting pictures of the grim side of life.

Anyway, I'll probably be watching Episode 1 (there will be six total) tonight or tomorrow, and will share my thoughts here. I have to admit, after some of what I've been reading (and after the same team's Christmas Carol adaptation), my expectations are not great.

Dickens documentary premieres in Utica

If you're in Utica, New York, you'll have a chance to attend the world premiere of Dennis Dewey's new documentary, Mr. Dickens Comes to Uttica. The film tells the story of Dickens's unscheduled layover in Utica during his American tour in 1868 and its effects on the local population. The film premieres at the Oneida County History Center on March 18, and will include an exhibition of artifacts related to Dickens's hotel stay. Go here and here for details! 

TCM alert

The channel is airing David Copperfield (1935) at 9:45 this morning as part of the 31 Days of Oscar celebration.