Interviews

Nigel Nevinson on taking Mr Pickwick on the road

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7 November 2012

The idea for doing a one-man play
based on The Pickwick Papers came when I
visited my daughter in Australia earlier this year. I was asking
advice from theatre friends about the possibility of taking a play to
the Adelaide Festival, and they thought that I should put on something
quintessentially British, such as The Pickwick Papers.

I had played Mr Pickwick on the
European Arts Company UK tour of The Pickwick Papers
four years ago. In March of this year I ruptured my Achilles tendon
playing tennis and, while I was housebound, started work on my own
adaptation of the novel.

Some performers have already portrayed
Charles Dickens reading excerpts from his novels (as of course he
did towards the end of his life), including the trial scene from
The Pickwick Papers. The difference in my
adaptation is that I will be playing Mr Pickwick telling his story
himself as well as many of the other famous characters who appear in
the novel.

It will be a light-hearted affair which
includes that well-known story of how it came about that Mr Pickwick
went to trial for breach of promise of marriage. It should appeal to
Dickens aficionados and also to people (perhaps too many of them!)
who have not actually read The Pickwick Papers.

After its Brighton showcase (16-18
November at the Purple Playhouse in Montefiore Road) I hope to tour
The Trials and Tribulations of Mr Pickwick more
widely in the UK during 2013 and then take it to the Adelaide
Festival & other places in Australia in 2014. It will be directed
by John O’Connor who produced the European Arts tour four years
ago.