18 August 2025
I once shared a truly terrifying car journey across London with Miriam Margolyes. She was at the wheel, driving me back to Clapham Old Town where we both lived at the time from a play reading at the home of Stewart Permutt (whose Motorhome Marilyn I am also reviewing at the Fringe). Miriam drove like an ancient warrior queen in her chariot, taking no prisoners along the route from North to South London, She had an almost complete disregard for the Highway Code and the proximity of other road users, all the while regaling me with stories and saucy anecdotes from her life. It was An Audience With Miriam… but just for me. I loved it but also feared it would her dulcit tones would be the very last thing I heard before some terrible collision would see me shuffling off this mortal coil.
Miriam is a national treasure. Of that there is no doubt. And her love and devotion to performing and promoting the works of Charles Dickens is second to none. So this show – a sequel to her 2024 Fringe hit – promising dollops of Dickens and morsels of Miriam should be a match made in heaven. And yet… among the superb sections in which she vividly brings to life some of Dickens most loved – and hated – characters, there is rather too much crudity and smutty stories about Miriam herself – much of which we’ve heard before on The Graham Norton Show and other TV sofas . It unbalances what should have been a 5-star evening.
“I’m not going to introduce myself, because if you don’t know who I am, then what the fuck are you doing here? I’m 84 and I haven’t had a fuck since World War One!” she boldly announces on arrival on stage to a mixture of shock and awe among the sold-out audience of devotees. “There’s still time” shouts back an elderly female audience member. Not missing a beat, the potty mouthed actress replies: “So there’s life still in the old cunt!”
Dickens it turned loathed fat old women – “he’d have hated me!” – but she doesn’t appear to hold that against the man who created over a thousand different Victorian characters, many of whom this shape shifter extraordinaire brings vividly to life, from Fagin meeting Oliver Twist for the first time to the hilarious courtship of Mr Bumble and Mrs Corney (and her cats).
She’s not afraid of being political and tackles what she feels about the Gaza situation as a Jew and J K Rowling and the trans issue pretty much from the get-go. I just wish it had been more Dickens and less Miriam, that would have avoided a slight staleness to the anecdotes.
