Into a world of grooming gangs, human trafficking and senior prelates resigning over child abuse cases comes Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s masterly musical. Is its grim tale of workhouses, pickpockets and domestic violence an awkward fit with today’s values? On paper, probably yes. Here, loyal Nancy is still a victim of her brutal lover, little Oliver is not spared becoming a felon in the eyes of the law, Fagin is a gangmaster with criminal intent. But this latest West End production is soft-centred alongside the Dickens and delivers just what fans of this wonderful score will want: impeccable Read more ...

“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and the art of its writer, then surely it is this description, by Charles Dickens in his 1865 novel, Our Mutual Friend, of his character Sloppy’s ability to read aloud from a newspaper. Ironically enough the book itself is one of Dickens’s least exuberant performances, written in his maturity, and with enormous and unnecessary detail (800 pages worth).Its complex plot has now been adapted for the National Theatre by Ben Power, with music by PJ Harvey. But is this the best way to tell this story? Dickens’s Read more ...

Familiarity has bred something quite fantastic with the Old Vic Christmas Carol, which is back for a seventh season and merits ringing all available bells - those and a lost love called Belle being crucial to the show. Matthew Warchus's staging at this point seems a seasonal imperative, and in a wild-haired Christopher Eccleston, Jack Thorne's adaptation of Dickens's 1843 call to empathic arms has its most emotionally piercing and resonant leading man yet. I've seen all the various Scrooges, from Rhys Ifans in 2017 onwards, including a memorable Covid-era turn from Andrew Lincoln Read more ...

We all need a break from time to time, especially now given the grim state of the world. So it’s not surprising that comedy is making something of a comeback in the West End: Operation Mincemeat; The Unfriend seen recently at this theatre; The Play that Goes Wrong and all its offshoots; and now Bleak Expectations, an affectionate send-up of the various tropes of Charles Dickens.Initially, a popular Radio 4 comedy, this dramatised version premiered at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury in 2022. For fans of the radio show wondering whether to go, there’s the additional attraction of a different Read more ...

There’s no point in being upset with the writer Steven Knight for doing what he usually does; even so, many viewers will find what he has done with Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations far too Peaky for their tastes. Knight’s role is described as having “created and written for television” a script “based on" the Dickens novel (much as he did with his 2019 reworking of A Christmas Carol). And that is what you get: a lurid Victorian gothic, so noir at times that you have trouble trying to follow what’s happening, and to whom, especially at night. A handful of the novel’s peripheral Read more ...

We’ve had 75 years to get used to Scrooge McDuck, so we can hardly complain if the Americans indulge in a little cultural appropriation and send Charles Dickens’ misanthrope to Depression-era Tennessee for another whirl on the catharsis-redemption ride. And, even if we Brits may feel a bit sniffy about Scrooge’s reinvention, he’s been kidnapped by Dolly Parton, the patron saint of country songs, for a holiday run on the South Bank - so listen y’all, there’ll be no rootin’ tootin’ about that round these parts.Expanded from a 40-minute "park presentation" at Dollywood into a full-fledged Read more ...

At this time of year you can't move for productions of A Christmas Carol, Dickens' seasonal morality tale. Some are brilliant, some so-so, but this one by the power-crazed impresario Mr Swallow, whose ambition always exceeds his talent, is a joy.Nick Mohammed – deservedly brought to an international audience as the nice-then-nasty Nate in Ted Lasso – appears in A Christmas Carol-ish as the vain, preening Mr Swallow, trying to underpay everyone on stage. In the opening scene his sidekick, Mr Goldsworth (David Elms), discovers Mr Swallow has forgotten to buy the rights – so it's no longer Read more ...

Life is full of coincidences and contradictions. As I was walking to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was on his feet in the House of Commons delivering yet another rebalancing of individual and collective resources. On reading a couple of fine essays in the excellent programme, I saw the acknowledgement of the production’s sponsor, Pragnell.The first item that appears on the jeweller’s website is a pair of earrings retailing at an eye-watering £71,500. Which is to say that the inequalities that fired Charles Dickens’ anger in the 1840s are still with us in the Read more ...

As proof that you can't have too much of a good thing, consider the return of Matthew Warchus's buoyant production of A Christmas Carol, now marking its fourth year at the Old Vic (with a lauded Broadway run last Christmas included, for good measure). But I would wager that neither Warchus nor his savvy adapter, Jack Thorne, ever thought that a production making a real virtue of inclusion would be playing this time out to an empty auditorium.Such are the dictates of the pandemic, however, that the show is closing out the ambitious In Camera series at this address allowing access in absentia Read more ...

The twelve days of Christmas have nothing on the flotilla of Christmas Carols jostling for view this season, each of which is substantially different enough from the next so as to give Dickens's 1843 story its prismatic due. Hailing from Broadway, where it was a seasonal perennial for a decade, this adaptation from Disney regular Alan Menken, Ragtime lyricist Lynn Ahrens, and the late, much-missed Mike Ockrent puts the emphasis squarely on the big and the brash. If you want quiet moments of revelation, Shaun Kerrison's musical staged concert is not for you. On the other hand, I all Read more ...

A Christmas Carol is a seasonal standard. In a normal year, there are a couple of versions to be enjoyed, usually led by the Old Vic in London, but this winter it feels like there’s an epidemic of adaptations. Whether this reflects an attempt to create a warmhearted response to the current depressing political and health atmosphere, or just an acknowledgement that this is Dickens’s evergreen masterpiece, doesn’t really matter. Watching Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre adaptation of this classic, which stars Simon Russell Beale, the only question is whether this is good theatre. And the answer Read more ...

Armando Iannucci’s move away from the contemporary political satires that made his name, first signalled by his bold, uproariously brilliant Death of Stalin, continues apace with a Dickens adaptation that feels quietly radical. It’s not just the colour-blind casting, which includes Dev Patel playing the young hero; the most striking thing about Iannucci’s Copperfield is how gloriously exuberant it is. While not turning away from the social concerns and personal cruelties that permeate Dickens’ work, Iannucci cranks up the comedy, humanity and sense of community of David Read more ...