The RSC’s “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby”

December 14, 2024 7:19 AM

On June 5, 1980, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 8-and-1/2 hour adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, premiered at the Aldwych Theatre in London. The 1981 Broadway run - with ticket prices of $100 ($340 in 2024 dollars) - earned Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor (Roger Rees). But the production’s chief exposure to American audiences was a filmed theater performance broadcast on public television over 4 consecutive nights.

The whole kit and kaboodle:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The rehearsals

The Penguin tie-in edition featuring the memorable art of Seymour Chwast

posted by Lemkin (13 comments total)

gutenberg
posted by HearHere at 7:24 AM on December 14 [1 favorite]

Leon Rubin’s fascinating The Nicholas Nickleby Story which relates the history of this undertaking, writes that by “August 1979, the RSC was in grave financial trouble.” Roger Rees mentions in an interview much later that the Arts Council was going to be cutting the funding for the RSC “in half.” But, according to Rubin, “Trevor’s philosophy was that the best form of defense is attack, and he believed that what he needed to find was a single piece of work that would provide a challenging acting opportunity for the entire company…He decided on an adaptation of a Dickens novel, that would harness in one work all the RSC’s vast resources and demonstrate what that company could really achieve.” There were forty-three actors in the company at that time, and they were already in the midst of seven Shakespeare plays and thirteen others simultaneously; yet Trevor was looking for that one piece that could display it all. Many of the Inimitable’s works were read and considered; ultimately, Nickleby won the day as “the best vehicle for their particular range of talents.”

”Remembering Roger Rees, and his Nicholas Nickleby”
posted by Lemkin at 7:24 AM on December 14 [3 favorites]

gutenberg

Much better is the Standard Ebooks edition.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks.

posted by Lemkin at 7:27 AM on December 14 [5 favorites]

The whole kit and kaboodle:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4
posted by Lemkin at 7:57 AM on December 14 [4 favorites]

Lemkin, thank you for this & new awareness of the various editions [historyofinformation]
posted by HearHere at 8:39 AM on December 14 [1 favorite]

A truly extraordinary production.
posted by SPrintF at 9:04 AM on December 14 [1 favorite]

I remember watching this with my parents!
posted by kyrademon at 9:15 AM on December 14 [4 favorites]

Thanks for this post! I remember seeing parts of this, but I was like 10 years old and didn't have the attention span for it. My folks were really into it, and my older brother too. I'm sending them this link. My parents are 83 now and though I will have to instruct them how to watch YouTube on their TV, I'm sure they will really enjoy this. Some of these actors went on to have big careers.
posted by SoberHighland at 9:29 AM on December 14 [1 favorite]

I was very into this at the time! I watched it on PBS. I still have a copy of that tie in edition book (though I never finished actually reading the whole thing). And then when the Kansas City Repertory Theater at University of Missouri, Kansas City did a production of it, I somehow coerced my dad into taking me to an all-in-one-day performance.
posted by dnash at 9:36 AM on December 14 [3 favorites]

I remember this vividly! My whole family watched it, and I even created a D&D character named after and with a background from it.
posted by tavella at 4:16 PM on December 14 [1 favorite]

The opening scene just by itself - from a kind of choral narration to an explosion of activity on a London street just as the overwhelmed Nickleby family arrives in the city - is such a tour de force moment of theatre that it is an absolute marvel that the rest of the play was able to live up to that moment. I've often wished i could direct something this epic, that could hold an audience mesmerized for 8 hours. Just a magnificent piece of theatre.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:03 AM on December 15 [1 favorite]

Last night we watched a movie (on Prime, might also be elsewhere) about Charles Dickens called "The Man Who Invented Christmas". It's pretty good.
posted by neuron at 10:51 AM on December 15

This has unlocked a memory from 10 year old me-- thanks for posting!

(IMDB link for the production)
posted by travertina at 5:44 AM on December 16 [1 favorite]