Reviewing a biography of actor Charles Laughton for The Times, in 1987, Peter Ackroyd quoted Charles Dickens: "The more real the man, the more genuine the actor."
In a twist extravagant enough to have been thought up by Dickens himself, the writer of that biography, Simon Callow, is now starring in a play penned by Ackroyd in which the "more real the man" quotation serves as its starting point.
Ackroyd, the Times' chief book critic since 1986, also writes biography. He is the capable -- even renowned -- biographer of Pound, Eliot, Dickens, Blake and the city of London itself, no less. Perhaps the most interesting (certainly most bizarre) of his literary portraits is of Charles Dickens, published in 1990, in which Ackroyd set out to "evoke the spirit of the novelist as well as the Victorian period itself" by "writing in a deliberately Dickensian fashion."
A literary mimic of formidable skill, Ackroyd writes that he even considered writing the biography as if it were a novel by Dickens himself. Though that, he adds, has already been done.
Given the marked similarities between Dickens and his characters, and the many fascinations Ackroyd and Dickens share, it is an obvious step for Ackroyd to want to turn biography into stage play.
The resulting work, The Mystery of Charles Dickens, is no dramatic masterpiece, but it is above average for this kind of bioplay. It is engrossing and thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, whether you are a fan of the Cockney visionary's writing or not. An intimate knowledge of the Dickens oeuvre is not a prerequisite, and you will probably come away with an increased appreciation and understanding of the man and his universe.
Ackroyd quickly and deftly makes his case: that Dickens' characters are just seams in the "streaky bacon" narrative of the novelist's life; that Dickens exerted control over his past through his plots; and that his invention was an inextricable part of his authenticity... the more genuine the act, the more real the man.
Ackroyd shuffles biographical details and brief scenes from novels with such deftness and speed that fact and fiction blur and finally fuse. We hear of the 12 year-old Charles being swept from his idyllic childhood in Chatham to a London blacking warehouse, where he must work ten hours a day, then are shown David Copperfield visiting Mr Micawber.
We leap from an autobiographical line about being common to the scene in Great Expectations where Pip "catches" contempt for his class from Miss Havisham and Estella. We also hear about the "lifelong contempt" that Charles learns for "the representatives of the people" in his time reporting House of Commons debates for The Morning Chronicle.
This is no hagiography though. It presents Dickens warts and all. If anything, the novelist is his own worst enemy. His opinions of his own worth are like Oscar Wilde epithets without the relief of irony. "I was a great writer at eight," he tells us. "I could write anything."
Ackroyd, sensibly, declines to turn the play into an apologia. He buttons his authorial lip when he could be explaining that Dickens was a product of the gothic novel; that the aggravating collisions of thigh-slapping farce and tear-jerking melodrama, of gloomy social comment and bathetic sentiment, were but a part of his cultural heritage.
Ackroyd, however, doesn't know where to take us in the second half. When he could be clinching his thesis, or throwing us into dramatic hyperspace, he seems to lose his nerve. The second half of the show is a series of dramatic divertissements; bravura scenes which Dickens used to read to rapt audiences on his punishing national and international tours.
One can't be too critical of a playwright when he is writing for an actor of Simon Callow's calibre, however. Callow animates the pantheon of rogues with awsome ease and alchemical skill. He even makes the dodgier passages sound reasonable. (What other British actor could deliver a line about "fanatical attention to detail" without it sounding like the Spanish Inquisition sketch from the Flying Circus?)
Callow has been performing this piece for two years or more, yet he comes to each line -- each word -- in the same way that Billie Holiday sang standards. His timing is flexible, intuitive, sure.
With his mobile and almost luridly sensuous mouth, and that mulled wine voice -- all warmth and pungent spice -- Callow captivates us. Intoxicates us. Delights us.
This is not, by any means, an arrogant flaunting of his skill. It is no more -- and no less -- than alertness. Here, we have a rare opportunity to see an immensely skilled actor entirely in the dramatic moment. Poised. Poised like a goalie capable of stopping anything that is fired in his direction.
This review was published in the Australian Financial Review, October 26-27, 2002.
