Margoyles is the kind of classically trained performer whose body is their instrument, and the tiny, sproutlike 71-year-old has perfect control of that instrument, moving every part of her body, her face, even her hair, with the same precision she brings to shifting accents and attitudes as she perfectly articulates the language of Dickens
an “enchanting and stunning performance.”
GLOOMSBURY Radio 4 11.30am ......This has turned into one of the funniest, slyest, most naughtily inventive and brilliantly performed shows on the air...
She breaks your heart and she makes you scream with laughter
The 71-year-old actress brings a host of characters to life, vividly connecting Mrs Micawber in David Copperfield with Dickens’s mother, and the forbidding Mrs Pipchin in Dombey And Son with his childhood guardian.
Touching on characters ranging from the sweet to the grotesque, the comic to the pitiable, and the fictional and real women in Dickens' life who inspired them, Margolyes makes the case that, while not necessarily the kindest or least sexist man of his age, the novelist could certainly create memorable female characters.
Not only is the play a testimony to the elastic acting talents of Margolyes, who transforms so completely and convincingly into every character she plays, but also to the genius and imagination of Dickens.
Miriam Margoyle's Dickens' Women at the Edinburgh Festival remains a masterclass not only in acting, but in the power of literature, writes Laura Barnett
Miriam Margoyles: A National Treasure More than two decades after its Edinburgh Festival debut, Miriam Margolyes returns to Scotland with one-woman show Dickens' Women
".....it’s also a show full of light, colour and comedy, and is, at times, gloriously irreverent. The show criticises Dickens as much as it praises him."