A trip to the the-aytre

I've just come back from seeing the brilliant Miriam Margolyes in Dickens' Women. She's a brilliant actress, and I think a lot of the humor comes from her facial expressions and body movements.
It made me wonder though about societal norms - as one of the characters she was doing before the intermission from Little Dorrit (I think) who was written as a revenge on an old love of Dickens' for the temerity of having grown old, she was thrusting and bumping her considerable bosom around which garned lots of laughs (from me as well), but I was struck by the thought would a thin actress have got the same laughs? Margaret and Barbara, the two elderly ladies I was sitting next to, didn't think they would have, but thought that it was alright because MM accepted what she was and used it to her advantage.

And talking of expectations - I totally failed in my hero worship after the show, when Miriam was giving her signature. The lady before me was talking to her about when she had seen her in other performances, and the lady behind me was engaging her with erudite talk about Dickens' work and characterisations, whereas all I managed to tell her was how much I enjoyed it and how good I thought it was. She very politely said that she glad I thought so and thanked me for coming (and was also kind enough to sign both the CD of the book and my program); but as I walked away I felt a little bit of a failure that I hadn't managed more. I guess it's because I like to think of myself as an intelligent person who can partake in decent conversation.

Whilst the show wasn't quite what I was expecting, I think due in part to the fact that I heard several interviews with her where she had gone into slightly more depth about Dickens and how the women in his life had affected him, and to the old book to performance conversion conundrum, it was still a brilliant night out and I reccommend it to anyone who happens to read this.
In regards to the BTPCC, I think the live performance in some ways is better than the written/spoken word. I bought the CD of the book for my mum, who wasn't able to make the performance, and I thought that the CD would be the poorer for the fact that you couldn't see Miriam's face pulling the expressions and grimaces of the chosen extracts. Thinking about this as I type, I guess the CD will have Dickens' written descriptions which she based her performance on in the first place, but that will be the listener's interpretation and not Miriam's, which I think is the listener's loss and the viewer's gain. It will be interesting to see what I think once I listen to the CD.

So if you get the chance, go and see it - 2012 tours dates can be found at the Dickens' Women website. I think you'll be glad that unlike Dickens, Miriam has made it (twice!) to Australia & New Zealand.