A Tale of Charles Dickens – A Radio Play by The Antaeus Company (L.A.s Classical Theater Ensemble)

The Los Angeles theater scene never fails to amaze and excite me. Especially in a genere that has sadly faltered since the advent of television, the radio play. My friend, the Brown One, invited me to accompany her to the Skirball Cultural Center to see A Tale of Charles Dickens presented by the award winning Antaeus Company. Let me steal from the program to tell you what this evening’s performance entailed, “16 actors portraying more than 50 characters. London in the 1830’s—the most colorful and chaotic city in the world—and young journalist Charles Dickens is uncovering a dark conspiracy of arson and murder. A fanciful look at the man before he became the iconic author we know today.”

What a treat this was! Murder most foul, burgeoning romance, a courtroom drama, bawdy drinking songs, and a cast of talented actors capable of populating all of England. So, basically, I am saying that I enjoyed the show immensely. It was a creative take on the early life of Charles Dickens with foreshadowing of how he would become the acclaimed writer that everyone knows today. Apparently this show is based on a script that runs 6 hours. I would be most intrigued to find out the other components of his writings that are alluded to in that missing 4 hours.

While out in the lobby at intermission I purchased several of the company’s previously performed plays that were available on CD and cassette. I bought Neil Simon’s great story, The Prisoner of Second Avenue which won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Comedy Album in 2000. Agnes of G-d was another casette I picked up, since I did scenes from it back in college (that very short time when I was a theater major), but never actually read the entire piece. I’m looking forward to listening to all of them in my car since I do a lot of driving and the stories keep me from getting irritated at traffic. In fact, last nights performance was recorded and can be heard this weekend on public radio and satellite.

May I take this opportunity to again speak to you, my dear readers about being a good audience? One of my friends, we’ll call him Mr. Know-it-all (I chose this name with affection of course, for those of you who are horrified that I would call a friend this-afterall, it is a fact, he simply knows everything) actually left because the person behind him was laughing uproariously whenever the players said anything remotely amusing. Now I don’t blame Mr. Know-it-all since I was also sitting in front of said rude person. I’m certainly not suggesting that it is not okay to enjoy the show with laugther and tears where appropriate, but this was out of proportions to what was actually going on onstage. It was distracting and what-more you could not hear the actor’s lines over these gigantic guffaws. In the future, if we were all just a little more aware of those around us…you get the point.