Two Simon Callows
From Mr Simon Callow Sir: I have just read Toby Young's fascinating review of my show The Mystery of Charles Dickens (Arts, 16 March). Or was it? Was it not perhaps another show of the same name, performed by another actor called Simon Callow? It doesn't sound like a very good show, I must say. A rather bizarre one.
Apparently, this other Simon Callow reads aloud from Dickens's novels. In my show, by contrast, there is none of this reading aloud. What I do is speak lines written by Peter Ackroyd concerning Dickens, not one of which derives from his biography, all of which have been freshly composed for the present show. I then speak — there is no book anywhere to be seen during the performance of passages from Dickens's works given in a style which attempts to recreate the extravagantly physical Victorian theatre in which Dickens flourished.
In the other show, apparently, the picture of Dickens which emerges is a cosy, sentimental one, whereas in my show, almost to a fault, we emphasise the darkness, depression, neurosis, cruelty and irrationality of some aspects of Dickens, while naturally acknowledging how funny and life-enhancing so much of his work is.
I only mention these things because Toby Young is new to the theatre-reviewing lark, and it has not perhaps been explained to him that he is supposed to give an impression of the show that he saw, not one that he may have expected to have seen, or afterwards imagined that he had just seen. If, that is, he saw my The Mystery of Charles Dickens and not the other one.
Simon Callow
London NWI
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