Why the Dickens?

Posted on 24th May 2025

I’m surely not the only person who hadn’t heard of Willian Macready before Mark Stratford’s performance, let alone appreciate his contribution to theatre as we know it. Stratford’s masterly one man show took his audience through the life of a nineteenth century actor/manager who rubbed shoulders with the likes of Edmund Kean and Sir Henry Irving, but who has now been largely forgotten. Judging by what we learned from Stratford, we have done the man an extraordinary disservice.

Solo shows that use monologue to educate as well as entertain have become the stable of touring theatre, for the most part involving a reincarnated historical figure ticking off key life stages before eventually, and rather awkwardly, explaining the circumstances of “their” death. Unusually, Stratford confronted this convention by repeatedly breaking character, and the fourth wall, keeping the audience up to speed as himself, before being subsumed back into character. If that sounds an ungainly, albeit expedient, device it worked surprisingly well, largely due to his command of the stage. By underplaying himself, while Macready’s bombast rattled the Corn Hall’s foundations, the delineation between the two remained clear throughout.

It was a technique that brought to mind how Dickens supposedly acted out his readings, which brings me to my only quibble. Billed as Dickens’s Theatrical Friend – presumably to draw in the punters – the play contains so much more.  Macready’s friendship with Dickens actually proved the least interesting aspect of an otherwise fascinating man who practically invented modern theatre. As much about his profession at the time as it was about Macready, the play was engaging from the start, particularly on how his revolutionary ideas changed the medium so profoundly that the star turn worship of the nineteenth century is largely lost history. How ironic that it took a star turn performance from Mark Stratford to enlighten up.