“Porter’s reading is a resurrection of living personalities. Davy, Murdstone, Steerforth, Peggotty and his progeny leap from the page as fresh as fresh pu’d gowans fine.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

150+ years since Charles Dickens last took to an Edinburgh stage to perform his legendarily lucrative public readings, 22 performers are recreating the magic each day at Assembly Fringe. Several lifetimes ago, in 2019, Eddie Izzard attempted something similar, although the EdFringe ambassador of today did not receive the expected adulation back then. Should we be surprised? Dickens’ not entirely undeserved reputation for impenetrable, wordy monumentalism – as with his just-about-contemporary, Sir Walter Scott – has reduced somewhat the numbers queuing round the block to engage with his art.

When I first read ‘Waverley’ a couple of years ago, yes, I realised I had been missing out. It’s the greatest novel in the English language. A masterpiece. They should really name some large piece of civic infrastructure in the book’s honour. But then again, those same reasons which made me cordially loathe Kevin and Perry when they first appeared would have kept me from warming to the hapless Edward Titular during all of early adulthood. It’s just too sharply observed. Dickens and Scott are intended for mature audiences – readers who have lived a little and learned a lot. Enter the wonderful Gail Porter.

I liked Gail Porter a lot back in the day – as did every hot-blooded youth with a pulse. Today she is one of my heroes, a woman who has been through several layers of Dante’s Inferno and come back (aye, a tad wee bit singed) but in the essentials stronger than a powered-up Pac-Man. Porter is Edinburgh. Pretty, if you like that sort of thing (which I do), but more importantly resilient AF, unafraid of a few squalls of inclement weather, and a damn sight smarter than the average bare bum on the Houses of Parliament.

There’s no list of the performers who are reading on any given day. I just happened to win the lottery and got the reader with the sheer weight of lived experience, intellectual depth and emotional range to really, Really, REALLY do justice to ‘David Copperfield’ and a bit of ‘Little Nell’. Dickens is a refuge, a safe harbour, for those whose vital spark caught light early in life but who never had the time or opportunity to find those spiritual anchorages which keep us all from checking into the loony bin when the unavoidable big questions and those shitty little nagging doubts finally come a’knocking.

Hubris and nemesis. Trials and tribulations. Kindness and cruelty. Love, hate, and (what’s far worse) indifference. These are the colour-shade staples of Dicken’s painter’s palette. In her unrehearsed, perfectly spontaneous performance, Porter does for Dicken’s pictures in words what a great restorer could do for that auld oil portrait of Scott and his dogs that’s just about still visible in the Spec Halls under all that ancient coal smoke. She brings the colours out vividly like how the sea at Santorini is supposed to be vivid. Porter’s reading is a resurrection of living personalities. Davy, Murdstone, Steerforth, Peggotty and his progeny leap from the page as fresh as fresh pu’d gowans fine, as urgent as a bus driver tapping his air brakes at a pedestrian on South Bridge who’s not finished his hurried crossing en route to this show.

If the other 21 performers achieve half of what Porter did -and if they have a good Kermit the Frog story to throw into the mix for added good measure – then come for Dickens done right. Stay for the camaraderie of a crowd who know we’re on to a good thing. Get your coarse Petersham great-coats on and go see this!

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