She worked in Blackadder and played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films; now British actor Miriam Margolyes is bringing her international show Dickens' Women to Otago next week. Charmian Smith reports.
Among the thousands of memorable characters in Charles Dickens' novels and stories, there isn't one fully rounded, mature female, according to Miriam Margolyes.
Yet despite that, her fascination with Dickens drove her to bring his characters to life in her show and book, Dickens' Women.
She and director Sonia Fraser devised the show for the Edinburgh Festival in 1989.
Since then it has toured the world and this year, Dickens' bicentenary, Margolyes is bringing it to Australia and New Zealand for the second time.
Actually, she didn't choose Dickens, Dickens chose her, she says.
" I read Oliver Twist when I was 11 and I was transfixed and thrilled and never stopped reading him after that.
"Then I discovered what a strange and complex man he was and wanted to somehow tell his story using what he'd written and that's what I do."
Dickens' female characters fall into three slices, she explains.
The child-women like Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, the grotesques such as Mrs Gamp, the drunken midwife in Martin Chuzzlewit, and the unobtainable sexual objects like Lady Deadlock in Bleak House or Estella in Great Expectations.
"I think he felt damaged by women, so when he depicts them he has somehow damaged them," she says, but she won't reveal how he was damaged by them.
"Many questions are answered by my show and others, of course, are posed by it."
Her crystal-clear, impeccably honed voice comes down the line from Sydney.
She lives part of the time in Australia with her partner, and part of the time in London.
Dickens was a "house devil, street angel", she says.
"When he felt loving and good and generous to somebody there was nobody better, but when the curtain went down on someone it was very black."
His wife Catherine was one he treated badly, bundling her out of the house after 22 years of marriage and 10 children, and publicly repudiating her. Another was Robert Seymour, who was the original illustrator of The Pickwick Papers.
"He was himself a very disturbed character who eventually killed himself, but they had a very vehement argument and Dickens was very contrary.
"He had very tense relationships with his publishers.
"He felt any insult keenly and was very sensitive to slights.
"If he thought he'd been overlooked or not treated correctly he would be vengeful and furious," she says.
"Because of his early life he knew about poverty and deprivation and he never forgot that. He was extremely compassionate in the wider way.
He gave money to people who were poor and whose families were left indigent.
He would donate always and took care of them for many years, so there was a very loving, generous, compassionate nature as well, but there was the other side to him."
Dickens loved adulation from the public and Margolyes feels his tours of public readings became rather like a drug to him.
"He adored being a performer and I think he got a great deal of satisfaction out of the tours, apart from the fact that it made him money, which he was always glad of.
"But I think when he had to go away without his family, and latterly he couldn't travel with his mistress, then I think he did feel rather lonely.
"Towards the end of his life I really think he was an alcoholic.
"He didn't eat and used to drink brandy and water a lot. He died of a stroke and I think he was heading for it for a long time.
"He was only 58 - not very old.
"Performing took a great physical toll - a sign of how much he wanted to do it, because they really were too exhausting for him."
Margolyes, now 70, finds no problem touring and performing, although she says she finds doing two two-hour shows a day exhausting and always tells people to come to the matinee.
The original production of Dickens' Women in 1989 was a two-person show, with David Timson playing Dickens, Mr Bumble (from Oliver Twist) and other characters, but when he married he didn't want to tour with the show, so Margolyes and Fraser reworked it to be a one-woman show.
"I didn't really want to because it's quite a lonely business being on stage on your own, which is why I'm lucky enough to have Mr John Martin as my lovely pianist.
"He came with me last time so I'm very lucky he's prepared to come out again," she says.
The music, most of it contemporary with Dickens, changes or underlines the mood and is a witty accompaniment, she says.
When last here, in 2007, Margolyes did shows in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. On this year's tour she is spending a month here, visiting many smaller places.
"The text has not changed at all, but the show has changed a lot because I've changed and because of what happens to you as you get older and have different thoughts about things. The emphasis is somehow different ... I think the darker bits are darker and the funny bits are funnier," she says.
"And which are this Dickens fanatic's favourite characters?"
"My favourite character used to be Mrs Gamp with whom I open the show, but I think age has turned me in the direction of Miss Havisham of Great Expectations.
"I find that now a most compelling character. I don't know why.
"It's what happens to people - their opinions shift and change and my life has taught me that things are tough and it's not just a walk in the park.
"When I say she's my favourite character, I don't mean I want to be like her or I admire who she was.
"What I mean is that in the depiction of her he has drawn something so powerful and extraordinary that she does not leave my imagination."
See it
Miriam Margolyes in Dickens' Women is at the Oamaru Opera House on May 15 and the Regent Theatre, Dunedin, on May 16.
Freebies
The Otago Daily Times, courtesy of Andrew McKinnon Presentations and Vibe, has a double pass to the Dunedin show of Miriam Margolyes' Dickens' Women to give away.
Simply send your name and daytime contact details to playtime@odt.co.nz by noon on May 14 to enter the draw. Please put "Dickens' Women" in the subject line.
Miriam Margolyes' Dickens In America premieres on Sunday, May 13, at 8.30pm on Vibe (Sky digital 7).
