Boxes and trunks crammed with memories and bits of costume. This is the writer’s inner turmoil, as suggested by Mad Dogs & Englishmen in Ann Courtney’s two-woman show Searching for Mrs Dickens.
In the atmospheric setting of Hylands House – its dark and decaying Banqueting Hall surely a home from home for Miss Havisham - Araceli Parish and Ann Courtney brought out from the luggage all the usual suspects – Betsey Trotwood and Madame Mantalini, Fanny and Tilda, Sarah Gamp and Madame Defarge. There are victims too – Mrs Nickleby, Mrs Micawber and Mrs Copperfield.
Miss Flyte, with her huge bird-cage, was beautifully done, as were Mrs Jarley, Miss Mounser and the recluse of Satis House, who shrank visibly in her chair.
But what made this evening so special was the air of mystery which bound the extracts together, as the women in their calico underwear interacted with the Master below, and occasionally with the menfolk in the attic, sound and music making a seamless narrative which was finally resolved in an unexpected touching image.
This small tour ends on December 20 and 21 in the equally atmospheric Layer Marney Tower. Worth a journey.
A PENCHANT for 17-year-old girls, a wife kept a virtual prisoner at home and having 12 children in ten years - what weirdo was the husband? Well, surprisingly, our own revered Charles Dickens.
These strange revelations among others came to light during the research for the Norfolk-based theatre company, Mad Dogs and Englishmen's intriguing production entitled Searching for Mrs Dickens. This was written by the company's founder, Ann Courtney.
The production was performed at the Lydney House Hotel in Swaffham, as part of the company's month-long tour of East Anglia, and played to an absorbed audience of around 40 people in the hotel's intimate theatre facility.
The set focused on a ladder, with trunks and hampers, from which the two female characters acting as Dickens' subconscious, took various costume items and acted out some of the main female characters from his novels.
Grippingly acted by Ann Courtney and Araceli Parish, they pondered on how the characters in the novels reflected the great writer's agonies, frustrations and even possible hatred of women.
With atmospheric and dramatic music and lighting, the characters portrayed included Betsey Trotwood and Mrs Copperfield, Mrs Micawber, Madam Degarge, Miss Flyte and Miss Haversham, with perhaps the most dramatic and touching being Nancy's death at the hands of Bill Sykes.
The strange irony of this being that Dickens' constant reciting of the death of Nancy during his gruelling nationwide, one-man shows, undoubtedly added to his own bad health and hastened his death in 1870.
The company's tour continues until Friday, and further details are available on 01953 888499.