Review: Dickens Unplugged
By Steve Payne. Taken from West Sussex County Times 22|02|06
Dickens of a laugh with this merry musical
The works of Charles Dickens are squeezed into an hilarious musical montage that audiences are flocking to see.
Five Americans, in the style of Reduced Shakespeare, provide a potted biography of Dickens and some short synopses of his major works.
So, Bleak House is reduced to a 30-second blues, while others, such as David Copperfield and Christmas Carol have the honour of lasting anything up to ten minutes.
Writer and director Adam Long cleverly mixes much humour with a truthful look at Dickens' life (for example, his decision to ditch one wife for a young girl).
The cast reveals an excellent sense of timing, musical skills and an ability to bring out the best of Long's writing in a fast-paced and extremely funny production.
Dickens Unplugged had already been showing for a week when I caught up with it, yet the theatre was packed.
This is theatre at its most successful and entertaining.