The Mystery of Charles Dickens (2002)

Before transferring to Broadway, The Mystery of Charles Dickens played to tremendous acclaim at the Comedy and Albery Theatres in London during 2000, then toured the UK and returned to the West End for another triumphant run in 2002. This remarkable one-man play is a tour de force that brilliantly interweaves Dickens’ turbulent life story with some of his most memorable fictional characters—brought to life by Simon Callow’s breathtaking performance. "Dickens was a man possessed with a gloriously theatrical imagination to which Callow’s magnificent performance does full justice." Daily Mail

What a find!!!

As an English teacher, whenever I have looked for material on Dickens, I have always checked to see what it says about Dickens' boyhood, which was the source of his art, his activism, and his "ghosts." Moreover, I have more than once wished that I could have seen Dickens live on stage acting out scenes from his novels, pouring heart and soul into the performances as his biographers have so often detailed. So you can imagine my delight to find this gem by Simon Callow, who appears as Dickens in a one-man show similar to those Dickens himself would have done in London, Edinburgh, and elsewhere. Callow has made Dickens come alive more than any written biography could do. He narrates the life of Dickens from boyhood to death, moving flawlessly between biographical material and excerpts from the novels to show the biographical elements of many of Dickens' works. His depiction of the personality, accent, facial expression, and body language of the panoply of Dickens' creations, not to mention Dickens himself, is amazing. No student could come away from this video and say they had not seen or did not understand Dickens. I also appreciate the way Callow handles Dickens' troubled marriage, his idealization of his dying 17-year-old sister-in-law, and his infatuation with the young Ellen Ternan. We come away viewing Dickens not as some roving-eyed dandy, as post-modern critics often do, but as a deeply scarred man looking for the lost ideal. I will definitely show this to students everytime I teach Dickens in the future. Its intermission between Acts I and II makes it possible to split the viewing into two class periods. If less time were available, a teacher would find Act I very satisfactory as a one-period, stand-alone piece. September 12, 2007

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