Dickensblog

New Dickensian dramas on BBC Radio 4

On Sunday, September 29, BBC Radio 4 will begin airing a whole season of new Dickens audio dramas:

• A two-part Hard Times, starring David Morrissey, Rachel Harper, Ike Bennett, Shaun Dooley, Janey Orchard, Jan Ravens, Will Close, Arthur Hughes, and Claire Cage;
• A three-part Little Dorrit, starring Jason Watkins, Samuel Barnett, Kitty Archer, Paul Bradley, David Tarkenter, and Claire Price; and
• A three-part Our Mutual Friend, starring Bukky Bakray, Sule Rimi, Issam Al Ghussan, Jeremy Ang Jones, Bettrys Jones, and Delilah Tahiri.

The channel will also be airing special Dickens-themed episodes of its show "Opening Lines," examining each of the three books adapted here. 

Listeners outside the UK should be able to access all shows via the BBC Sounds website and app. Go here to learn more!

TCM alert

Oliver Twist (1948) airs on the channel at 11:30 Eastern this morning.

At the chalet with Dickens

Dickens's Swiss chalet, the building where he did much of his writing, is open to the public free of charge this weekend, as part of England's annual Heritage Open Days event. Medway Council, the Dickens Fellowship, and other groups hope the event will help "raise awareness" of the need for funds to restore the chalet. If you happen to be in Kent, go check it out!

'King of Kings' has a distributor and a release date

Blue Harbor will be releasing the animated adaptation of The Life of Our Lord next Easter. Go here to learn more.

'A Christmas Carol' with drones

This December, a drone light show will tell the story of A Christmas Carol in Nottingham and Bristol, England! Go here to read all about it, and to buy tickets if you're in the area.

Sam Mendes's 'David Copperfield': A review

By Cody M. Quanbeck, guest blogger

I wasn’t initially sure I would listen to the new audio dramatization of David Copperfield from director Sam Mendes and adapter Marty Ross, since I wasn’t a fan of their adaptation of Oliver Twist. What ultimately convinced me to give it a try was the casting of Helena Bonham Carter as Betsey Trotwood. In my experience, Bonham Carter can be a very charismatic performer, but I had a hard time picturing her as the character. That’s the beauty of audio dramas, however. To my mind, Helena Bonham Carter may not look physically intimidating enough to be Betsey Trotwood, but that doesn’t occur to me while I’m listening to her stellar vocal performance. (Sadly, though not surprisingly, this adaptation doesn’t give the character the emotional arc she had in the book, but that’s not the actress’s fault.)

The cast’s other standout is Richard Armitage, who sounds awesomely creepy as Mr. Murdstone. Ncuti Gatwa is also great as the title character. (When that character is an adult, that is. Reece Kenwyne Mpudzi voices him as a child.)

But not everyone is so well cast. Rhiannon Clements sounds too mature to be Dora Spenlow, making the character’s occasional brattishness and general immaturity less tolerable than they should be. To be fair, though, the problem there may lie more with the writing than the acting.

Ah, the writing.

Puzzling over Dickens

Author and teacher Julian Morgan gives an interview here about his book Charles Dickens Puzzles, a collection of 100 puzzles of various kinds based on Dickens's life and works. The book is available here. (Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualified purchases.)

A free book on Dickens!

Cambridge University Press, publisher of the new book Dickens and the Gothic by Andrew Smith, is offering the book for free for the next two weeks. You can read it online or download the PDF version at this page (click the "Save PDF" button) through July 23. I've started reading this short book -- it's really more of a monograph -- and so far it's very accessible and interesting! Thanks to Dale Townshend, Elements in the Gothic series co-editor, for the tip.

New 'Oliver!' production from Cameron Mackintosh opens tomorrow

Legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh and director-choreographer Matthew Bourne are bringing a new, "more intimate production" of the Lionel Bart musical Oliver! to the Chichester Festival Theatre in West Sussex, England. From there the production is expected to move to London's West End in December. This is a drastic change from Mackintosh's previous "huge" stagings of the musical with director Sam Mendes in 1994 and 2009. 

On the casting, Playbill reports:

The cast will be led by the previously reported Simon Lipkin (Guys and Dolls) as Fagin, Shanay Holmes (Miss Saigon) as Nancy, Aaron Sidwell (Henry VI) as Bill Sikes, Billy Jenkins (Les Misérables) as the Artful Dodger, and Philip Franks (The Rocky Horror Show) as Mr. Brownlow.

Newly announced for the production are Oscar Conlon-Morrey (Mother Goose) as Mr. Bumble, Katy Secombe (The Music Man) as Widow Corney, Stephen Matthews (Strictly Ballroom) as Mr. Sowerberry/Dr. Grimwig, and Jamie Birkett (Peter Pan Goes Wrong) as Mrs. Sowerberry/Mrs. Bedwin.

Sharing the role of Oliver Twist will be Cian Eagle-Service (The Witches), Raphael Korniets (The Snowman), and Jack Philpott (The Witches).

The Chichester Festival Theatre website has rehearsal footage and photos along with a link to purchase tickets. 

More from the Dickens Museum

On July 3, at 2 p.m. U.K. time, Dr. Claire Wood and Professor Hugo Bowles will give a virtual talk on "Decoding Dickens: The Shorthand Mysteries," focusing on shorthand texts written by Dickens that are still being deciphered. Go here to learn more and to sign up! 

And if you're in London or plan to be there sometime in the next few months, go check out the exhibition "Faithful Companions: Charles Dickens & His Pets," which "explore[s] the stories of Dickens's own pets and some famous animals from his novels through precious objects, such as his hand-written letters, family photo albums and artworks." It runs until January 12. To promote the exhibition, the Museum's Facebook page offers a reading by Helena Bonham Carter of Mamie Dickens's anecdote about her father, his cat, and a candle; and Simon Callow's reading of a passage about Bull's-eye from Oliver Twist.