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Dickens Debate

Arthur Brown, Staincross: What the Dickens?! Accompanied by my wife and two friends, I went along to the Civic to see An Evening with Simon Callow.

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What the Dickens: Simon Callow.

Friday 10th February 2012

What the Dickens?! Accompanied by my wife and two friends, I went along to the Civic to see An Evening with Simon Callow.

Anticipating a sell-out event, with a rare chance of seeing this distinguished actor reading excerpts and offering us characterisations from the great author, the tickets were purchased some six weeks before.

What we were offered was Mr Callow appearing on stage for one hour 40 minutes and telling us the life story of Charles Dickens with just one reading from ‘The Pickwick Papers’. The information he gave us could have been gleaned from any one of the numerous biographies now on sale to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth.

Mr Callow, indeed has just written his own book on the subject which has just been published. Several references were made to this book and a few excerpts were read.

Mr Callow concluded his ‘performance’ with the promise of a book signing session afterwards. The overall impression of the evening, was the sense of feeling short-changed and in practical terms, we were.

The tickets were £14 each, Mr Callow’s book retails on Amazon at £9.69.

Comment on this story

Posted by GPJAYNE on Sun 12th Feb 2012 at 03:27pm "Anticipating a sell-out event, with a rare chance of seeing this distinguished actor reading excerpts and offering us characterisations from the great author" I too purchased my tickets early and was not disappointed. Yes, Mr. Callow told the story of Dickens and if you had done your research, you would have known what the monologue was about. You should have also known that Mr. Callow has just released a book about Dickens, hence it was obvious a "book signing" would be taking place! For me this evening was well worth the £16 I paid, the £15 for the book and the conversation with Mr. Callow, priceless. I am rather disappointed that Barnsley Chronicle chose to print such a derogatory letter about Mr. Callow, bearing in mind this was his first ever visit to Barnsley and unfortunately, may be his last!