The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, with over 3,700 shows. This year, Playbill is on board our FringeShip for the festival and we’re taking you with us. Follow along as we cover every single aspect of the Fringe, aka our real-life Brigadoon!
As part of our Edinburgh Fringe coverage, Playbill is seeing a whole lotta shows—and we're letting you know what we think of them. Consider these reviews a friendly, opinionated guide as you try to choose a show at the festival.
There is something so deliciously divine about observing a person in their own element. Passion is infectious. To watch someone wax rhapsodic about something they care about can be addictive—at times, tantamount to other, baser pleasures.
Or at least, it can be when listening to BAFTA-winning actor and British national treasure Miriam Margolyes talk about Charles Dickens.
Confession time: I was exactly the right audience member for this show. If you're looking for bells, whistles, and a significant amount of rehearsal, this one might not be for you. But if you too got told off in grade school for sneak-reading literature under your desk during math class, you may be tickled by the indulgently delightful production Margolyes has cobbled together.
The conceit is simple. In front of a (very large, by Fringe standards) audience, enveloped within a comfortable arm chair, Margolyes reads some of her favorite selections from the collected works of Charles Dickens for approximately 40 minutes. You see, Margolyes loves Dickens. Loves. Wearing a shimmering teal caftan that catches the light with every movement, she positively ripples with energy while reciting favored selections from Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and more.
Only portions of the text are memorized, with the brunt of the performance falling upon Margolyes reading from a decoratively bound book before delivering her interpretations of the text and any anecdotes that happen to come to mind in the moment. Do not worry, however; this is no dry lecture. At times appearing to burst out of her skin with excitement, Margolyes recites with enough energy to power the spotlight, which dances to keep up with her as she moves from chair to stage and back, unable to stop herself from performing sequences in full character voice and movement (no matter how much it must stress out the poor spot op).
So excited was she to recite her favorite scene from Oliver Twist ("I was a prisoner to Dickens' world from that moment to this, and I hope to imprison all of you too!") that she nearly skipped over A Christmas Carol, launching into an enthusiastic ode to Fagin before realizing her mistakes (but not until surely giving her backstage crew a fright). That favorite scene, where the beadle Mr. Bumble woos the widow Mrs. Corney, had the audience riotous with laughter as Margolyes shifted from the aging coquette to the brash constable at great speed, flirting so shamelessly with herself that one yearns for an enterprising director to produce a one-person film of her in every possible role.
Margolyes' recitation is only one half of the evening however. For after her selections have come to a close, a 30-minute audience Q&A concludes the proceedings. With questions submitted far in advance by ticket holders, Margolyes late career status as the Queen of the British Chat Show is in full effect, her wit razor sharp and filter non-existent opposite her selected emcee.
Her favorite swear word? "Cuntface," because she likes to watch the sign language interpreters when she says it. Her opinion on the Daily Mail? "Scabrous." Does she still own the rental home that was unknowingly used as a drug drop for international smugglers several years back? Yes, and she is now known to her neighbors as Miriam Escobar.
Other questions and their accompanying answers are more thoughtful. "They told me when I was young that I would be more employable when I was old; I never thought they meant this old!" She would love to return to the play Long Days Journey Into Night one day, in the role of Mary. And while she's at it, can someone please cast her as Nick Bottom in a production of A Midsummer Nights Dream? Why should Dawn French have all the fun?!
It being the Edinburgh Fringe, Margolyes was, of course, cajoled into retelling her infamous late night adventure from her very first festival—when a late night walk through the Meadows turns into a rather...dishonorable discharge. While Margolyes has told the tale on television before, certain details had been sanitized so as to not be pulled off the air; she shared the full story with the rapt audience, who shrieked with delight at every new reveal.
To view the sanitized version, check out the following clip from The Graham Norton Show; warning, its contents are still very much NSFW.
As the boisterous audience and the productions slew of sold out dates attest, Margolyes is positively beloved, occupying the role of naughty grandmother to the nation. And don't get it twisted; she knows it, and clearly revels in it. But in Margolyes, I identified something even more heartening; a kindred language nerd.
What I'd give to join her book club.
Margolyes & Dickens: The Best Bits runs at Pleasance at EICC through August 15. Click here for tickets.
