Low Down

Roller coaster through Dickens opus by a founder member of the Reduced Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Review

I haven’t seen the highly successful Reduced Shakespeare Company but one of the founder members, Adam Long, is the author of this play, Dickens Unplugged. I can’t make any comparisons therefore, but this – slickly presented – show for me only just scrapes into the three star bracket from two stars.

I must confess at the outset to a slight antipathy with the genre of rather patronising American so-called satire on the subject of ‘lil ‘ole Britain’ about which they often have an inaccurate other-side-of-the-pond-and-far-away acquaintance. 

Don’t think I can’t take a joke against myself , or my Country, (actually it’s a nice compliment to be teased), but satire must be based on accurate knowledge of the object of the satire, not on some sloppy approximation. In these circumstances having a laugh at Dickens’s expense just becomes cheap and childish. 

Oliver Twist is their first target: a colourful example of home-grown Bartywood is interrupted by a short acted scene showing the reality of Oliver’s condition. Now this I thought was an interesting idea and I wish the Company had explored and developed this further. (The second piece of ‘reality’ acting was heralded as being ‘truthful’: for me the only truth it exposed was the very different style of acting in Britain from the USA: the former at its best would have unplugged as it were all the pathos of Fagin in jail and the conflicting emotions of Oliver meeting him there, with the maximum of restraint and the minimum of externalised effect, not as in this production, chasing the truth away with extravagant and generalised histrionics.)

In fairness I am bound to say I don’t think my views would have been shared by the audience who seemed to enjoy this show a good deal. Indeed it may have a future and do well even as it is. I am beginning to wonder, however, about the critical faculty of British audiences who seem to be beginning to accept anything they’re dished up with provided it’s hyped up enough: Big Brother for example. If sharp and trenchant wit replaced easy, flabby one-liners then the zip of the already good production standards might cause more stars to twinkle.

Reviewed by RF 21.08.07

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