From one of Charles Dickens' most famous novels. Rich, greedy Ralph Nickleby learns that his
brother is dead and that he will have to support his sister-in-law and the children. He sends her son Nicholas
off to work in a miserable boarding school where students are beaten and starved. Smike is the most horribly abused
of them all. Nicholas befriends Smike and suspects that he might actually be Ralph's long-lost son. Emotion
reaches a high peak when pitiful Smike falls in love with Nicholas's beautiful sister.The primary reason why
theatres don't treat their audiences to more dramatizations of the great works of Charles Dickens is because the complexity
of Dickens' plots, characters, and settings makes staging them exceedingly difficult. And therein lies the beauty of this
dramatization of Nicholas Nickleby. Joellen Bland has skillfully managed to accommodate the many different locales and
settings without the need for scene-shifting or distracting breaks in the action. The play may be performed in any space; flats
or backdrops are not needed. She captures the essence of the plot and characters with economical strokes of dialog and phrasing
so that audiences fortunate enough to see this play will feel the deep emotion, understand the social commentary, and appreciate
the humor which Dickens wrote into his timeless novel. Mrs. Bland has portrayed the Dickensian characters faithfully and with humor,
sensitivity, and pathos.
The script was one of the winners of a Shenandoah Valley Playwrights Retreat. After three weeks of rewriting
with the advice and encouragement of a professional director and dramaturg at Pennyroyal Farm, Staunton, Virginia, the play was given a
staged reading by the Retreat acting company at the Oak Grove Theatre. Mrs. Bland has been the director of VMI Theatre at Virginia Military
Institute in Lexington, Virginia, since 1982. Several of her other plays have been published.
Two acts; Place, London and Yorkshire; Time,
1830's. For all groups.