Now many books take on a life of their own.  Any reader of note can cite a half a dozen books that catch the heart and imagination of the public (Make that fifty books. Harry Potter turned the reading world on its ear more times than I can count on one hand) and a play or a film will sometimes add up to more than the sum of its parts.  We’re all glad when these moments occur.   It isn’t often, though that the production of a play makes that big a stir.  If a play is memorable it’s revived often, people start putting new interpretations on it and pretty soon the initial production is a faint and lovely memory.  It’s late and my brain may not be working but I can only think of one time where the book, the play and the production of the play all became moments that people discuss later.  And the all three are named The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

I talked about the book yesterday and mentioned how Dickens indulged his love of the theatre by incorporating a sub-plot about an acting troupe.  Well the theatre has always returned the author’s affections and this novel has been brought for the stage or screen at least seven times.  The problem is, the book is such a hard property to adapt.  It has a huge case of parts and so much happens in the book that most adapters hacked off hunks of the story and the author’s commentary on the social issues of Victorian England in order to get the running time down to a reasonable length.   The result was something like ordering a Dagwood sandwich and getting one without the lettuce, tomatos, onions, pickles, dressing, conditments or cheeses.  The remaining meat and bread are fine but it can’t compare to the Dagwood.

Enter David Edgar and the Royal Shakespearean Company, circa 1977.  The company is on the edge of bankruptcy and the artistic director has a Brilliant Idea.   They should adapt some epic Dickens novel and do an all-out production that will either save their bacon or kill them.  Seasoned playwright, David Edgar, is brought in.   His evaluation of the material: you’ve got way more than 2 hours here.  Edgar adapted it to the stage and by dint of cutting what he could, reduced it to a “mere” eight-and-one-half hours.  More than ten hours if you count potty breaks. 

For this Edgar kept in all the subplots and the best of the commentary and the actors went to work researching the source material.  For example, one actress read up on the health care of Victorian England and learned why Fanny Squeers admired the hero’s “very straight legs.”   Times and nutrition being what they were, straight legs were less common than rickets.  The rest divided up the novel amongst themselves and figured out how to keep the picturesque language while the Director tried to figure out how to cast 40 people into a hundred parts and stage a ten hour play that takes place all over England.

How did I learn about all this?  Nicholas Nickleby became the project that wouldn’t die and the interest it generated in the UK and the US was phenomenal.  First it swept all the theatrical awards in Great Britain and two years later, the company came to American and walked off with all of the Tony awards.  People stood on line to see a nightly 4 hour performance (they broke the play in half meaning you had to buy tickets twice if you wanted to see the whole show once) where 40-50 actors tumbled on and off a bare stage playing different parts and good collided with evil out front, in the aisles and sometimes ran through the audience.   It was thrilling theatre and the RSC made more money than the accountants could hide.

The play is sound and has been revived once or twice but when anyone talks about seeing the stage version of Nickleby, they mean the RSC production of the early 1980’s.  Luckily those performances did get filmed and they’re re shown periodically.  It’s one of the few times when an adaptation is remarkably faithful to the book.

If you are interested, the play “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” is by David Edgar and Leon Rubin, the RSC director that brought Edgar’s play to life wrote a book about that legendary production, The Nicholas Nickelby Story.  (Well, what else would you call it?)  For those who love all three versions (like me: I have the novel, the play, the book on the production and the blessed production on DVD) the Rubin book gives incredible back-story on the development of that theatrical history and it is well worth the read. And if you still can’t get enough, I know of some similar material that might interest you.   You see, there’s other books by this bloke, Charles Dickens…