The legendary, 8 ½ hour stage marvel was conceived not during a time of financial excess for the RSC, but during a time of straitened means in fact, 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. music, movies, etc ~ that I could take with me to the proverbial desert island, it would be this production. If there is one single piece of recorded material ~ e.g. Who knew that this brainchild of Trevor Nunn, in collaboration with John Caird and adapted for the stage by David Edgar, born of necessity rather than superfluity, would be such a life-changing testament to the power of theatre and the power of Dickens, even forty years after its live production? Decades and distances later, it remains the ultimate Dickensian romp, hilarious and heartbreaking. It begins so innocuously with those quirky, slightly dated-sounding notes (now forever beloved) of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1981 filmed stage production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. “Why, so it is,” replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised “but not by day, Smike-not by day.” “Is this a theatre?” whispered Smike, in amazement “I thought it was a blaze of light and finery.”
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