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Dickens' Women

 ((UCLA's Freud Playhouse; 588 seats; $ 25 top))

By CHRISTOPHER MEEKS

UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, L.A. Theatreworks & the UK/LA Foundation present a solo performance in two acts by Miriam Margolyes; directed by Sonia Fraser.
 

In the one-woman show "Dickens' Women," Miriam Margolyes exudes her passion for the writer and his characters as she plays over a dozen roles. Written and performed by Margolyes, and directed crisply by Sonia Fraser, the evening delights anyone interested in Dickens.

Best known as a character actor ("The Age of Innocence,""Little Dorrit"), Margolyes brings her show to UCLA as part of the UK/LA Festival, a celebration of British arts.

She juxtaposes novelist Charles Dickens' life against a number of his female literary characters with clear explanations and brilliant renderings. It's a slight variation of her lovely 1990 show at the Tiffany Theatre, "Wooman, Lovely Wooman, What a Sex You Are!"

Speaking at a replica of a 19th-century podium that Dickens used on his speaking tours, she explains that "women in Dickens' life fueled his works." Dickens was far different from his popular image as "the warm, jolly family man, father Christmas," she says. "Rather, he had a tormented and demonic side."

Indeed, he came to treat his wife, Catherine, the mother of his 10 children, poorly, seeing her as "near being a donkey as one of her sex can be." He ended up living with her much younger sister, and willing the sister his estate at his death.

Even so, Margolyes enacts Dickens' characters, both flattering and unflattering, with warmth and humor, often snapping from one character to another to create conversations.

She is Miss Havisham and Pip, Dora and David Copperfield, Mrs. Bumble and her suitor, and more, whisking about on a minimal set that includes two Victorian chairs, a piano and a pianist.

While some women come under Dickens' sharp and satirical pen, others, like the lesbian Miss Wade from "Little Dorrit," are filled with dignity.

While Margolyes finds his prepubescent, angel-hearted girls "rather icky," and others of his women appear in a male chauvinist light, she points out again and again Dickens' literary genius. The show proves the point she makes at the start, that "literature is the stuff of life itself."

Andrew Leigh's light design delineates the sections well. The piano music, uncredited, underscores appropriately.

Lighting, Andrew Leigh. Opened, reviewed Oct. 11, 1994; runs through Oct. 16. Running time: 2 hrs., 20 min.