“Guaranteed to offend and delight,” says the publicity. Really? It’s rare now to hear the name Miriam Margolyes without that dread phrase “national treasure” attached, which is another way of saying that no one is likely to be offended when she swears floridly from the stage. She does so here, and tells lurid stories of alfresco wanking and unlikely drug busts too. But not before, in a show of two halves, she performs a handful of Dickens extracts, showcasing her love of the novelist and her shape-shifting flair.
Dickens created 2,000 characters, says Margolyes by way of an introduction – “and I’m going to perform them all for you now!” In truth, some will feel she underdelivers here, with only 25 minutes of the advertised Dickens material versus a half-hour plus Q&A. That’s a shame: the affinity is luminously evident between extravagant Margolyes and Dickens’s larger-than-life way of seeing the world. She gives us her Mrs Gamp, her Flora Finching and – replete with eloquent throaty cackle – her Fagin. She reads us the closing pages of A Christmas Carol – summoning, to this viewer’s mind, happy memories of her own role (unmentioned here) in the Blackadder version. She performs the courtship of Mr Bumble and Mrs Corney, and when Dickens writes “if ever a beadle looked tender”, she brings the joke vividly to life.
It’s a pretty dazzling display of Margolyes’ range. But soon she reverts to the character for which she’s now best known: her own. A hireling appears to pose her questions from the audience, which tee up anecdotes not-so-fresh from Graham Norton’s couch. There’s the one about a nocturnal encounter with a randy man in an Edinburgh park, and another about her seaside cottage being appropriated by drug runners. Great waves of love and hilarity greet her every bon mot, even when they’re not that bon, such as the well-worn observation about the queen dying after meeting Liz Truss. Offends and delights? Well, there’s some delight – and not a scintilla of discomfort – in discovering that this small-screen treasure is every bit as cherishable in person.
At Pleasance @ EICC, Edinburgh, until 15 August
