Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14331 in DVD
• Brand: A&E
• Released on: 2002-09-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 540 minutes

Amazon.com
Yes, it's nine hours long. Yes, it's Charles Dickens, he of the 900-page novels you had to read in high school. And, yes, it's a film of a play. But the Royal Shakespeare Company's Tony Award-winning 1981 production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby at London's Old Vic Theatre was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and those of us who missed its Emmy-winning PBS broadcast can be thankful for A&E's superb video boxed set. Dickens's story of greed, poverty, and cruelty in Victorian England is handled deftly by director Jim Goddard and set designer John Napier, who never deny their film's staginess but instead seek to exploit it, unafraid to show the viewer the skeletal nature of the theater and, in one instance, boldly using actors as props. The RSC makes excellent use of this mise en scène, bringing to life Dickens's characters with intensity, verve, and just the right notes of melodrama--this being a Dickens story, after all.

Roger Rees plays the young, earnest Nicholas, whose father's death prompts him; his sister, Kate (Emily Richard); and their mother (Jane Downs) to make their way to London to seek out the financial assistance of Nicholas's cold, calculating uncle, Ralph Nickleby (played to scowly perfection by John Woodvine). Ralph grudgingly provides his nephew with employment at a Yorkshire school for abandoned boys under the cartoonishly vile Wackford Squeers (Alun Armstrong), but Nicholas can't stomach the physical abuse Squeers heaps on his students. After lashing out at the sadistic schoolmaster during a particularly savage beating of a child, Nicholas escapes the school, taking with him the most wretched of the young creatures, a limping, crooked-backed boy named Smike (played heart-wrenchingly by David Threlfall). The story unfolds from there, with the now-itinerant Nicholas forced to make his way in the world while adhering to his principles and protecting Kate and their mother from his scheming uncle, who is eventually forced to come to terms with his emotions in the story's shocking conclusion. Typically Dickensian, the characters are neatly divided between good and evil, with little ambiguity. Still, each of the 39 actors in the ensemble does a wonderful job, making it a production that figures to linger in the memory long after you're done clapping. --Steve Landau

Customer Reviews

Great RSC production deserves better DVD
One of the finest theatrical productions of all time, no question. Beautifully staged and brilliantly performed; 39 of the world's best actors play more than 150 roles.

The DVD set should be better than this. (The play gets 5 stars; the DVD gets 1.)

It is improperly cut and sloppily transferred. A&E has released it (after much anticipation) not in its original four 2-hour acts but in the nine 1-hour episodes that they cut for broadcast on television, with intros and credits every hour. All they've done is transfer their 9-cassette VHS release, with intros, opening and closing credits and a "previously seen" commentary (meant for the TV audience watching it over a period of nine days) onto four DVDs, frustratingly marring the flow of the production. Not only does the play get interrupted every hour, but at one point you have to change discs mid-scene. In addition (and inexplicably) this DVD version is missing a scene that's on the VHS.

If A&E gets their act together, they'll rerelease this set and return this incredible play back to its original structure, without the cuts and interruptions. Isn't that the point of DVD? Bear in mind also that many of the glowing reviews on this site refer to the VHS set (and the play itself) and don't address the inept job of transferring the VHS onto DVD. (Amazon's reviewer even credits Jim Goddard as the director, when all he did was arrange cameras and make adjustments for taping; the actual directors of the play, Trevor Nunn and John Napier, go unmentioned.)

As you may have read in other reviews, the original stage production was four 2-hour acts in two parts (the running time of the play is actually 8 hours without the intermissions, not 9, as is stated in Amazon's review), and Parts I and II could be seen all in one day or over two consecutive nights. The designers of this set could have devoted one disc per part, without interruption, with one more disc for any extras (there aren't many). A four-disc set is excessive and inappropriate; it allows them to up their price while it weakens the experience of the play. (Peter Brook's 9-hour stage production of "The Mahabharata" is on two DVDs, in fine quality and half the price.)

I saw the play on Broadway in 1981 and, like most in that theater, fell in love with it. I've had the VHS version all this time and hoped that eventually it would be on DVD, carefully restored.

I would avoid buying this set and wait until they release one that's complete, uncut and faithful to the play. It's one of the greatest stage productions of all time. It features the Royal Shakespeare Company in its prime. It deserves better than this. The movies "Pearl Harbor" and "Dogma" got better DVD treatments. That's pretty sad.

Brilliant Program - Inexcusable transfer
This DVD presents one of the finest stage productions ever preserved on film. Other reviews have very ably pointed out the transcendant writing and performances. HOWEVER...these disc are truly the most careless tranfer I have ever seen outside of the public domain. The broadway production was offered in 2 parts, each part contained 2 acts. If you really wanted the full immersive experience you saw part one on a Saturday or Sunday Matinee, broke for dinner and returned that same night to complete the epic. Some of the power of the piece comes in the cumulative effect of losing yourself in Dicken's world. The original broadcast was similarly aired with no commercial interuptions (Thanks, I believe, to Exxon) over four nights. WHY then has A&E broken its 4 discs into hour long segments, each containing the begining and ending credits? (You can't skip these segments, only fast forward over them.) The transfer, even on my 24" TV looks like a VHS copy recorded on the economical speed, grainy and washed out. Don't even try to play it on a large screen TV. (I just read a review of their transfer of the Miss Marple series which makes similar complaints.) It feels like A&E literally had some authoring house get a VHS copy of a copy of a copy from the store and record it as is. I am very glad I bought this box set for 2 reasons. 1... I've long wanted to revisit the brilliant production unvailable for so many years. 2... I learned to NEVER buy another A&E disc until they start respecting the shows they transfer.

Edited, inept DVD of a masterwork.
I'm not hard to please when it comes to DVD's. All I really expect is the complete film, in its proper format, with decent audio/video quality. I love the extras when they're there, but I don't feel that I'm owed them; just the film, that's really all I ask. It is with considerable anger that I report that this pricey, elaborate DVD set of the finest Dickens dramatization ever done fails utterly to provide even that.Several earlier reviewers have gone into considerable detail about the mess that A&E Video has released in place of a decent version of this epic production, and there's no point in my repeating what they've written. I direct you to their reviews for the specifics. Let me emphasize three things;1: The program is edited, cut, shortened from its original form, and to have released it on DVD like this is a disgrace. The cuts are (relatively) minor, but the length and complexity is much of the point of this long production, and it ought to be complete, not whittled down like a TV episode. 2:The hacking of the original four parts into an arbitrary, artificial nine(!) parts completely demolishes the momentum and flow of an extremely plot-intensive story.3: It seems to have been released in this fashion out of sheer sloppiness; even cheap exploitation B-movies get more respect and attention from the studios that release them than A&E has shown this classic. As it so happens, I own the original VHS four-tape set that CBS Home Video released back in the mid-1980's; the video quality is pretty bad, the color washed out and the audio mediocre, and it's still preferable to this botch. NICHOLAS NICKELBY was one of the most anticipated DVD releases on my list. Disappointment doesn't begin to convey my feeling about the debased version that's actually been released. For crying out loud A&E, stop production on this set and DO IT RIGHT!