STAGE REVIEW : ‘NICKLEBY’ IS A LONG JOURNEY, BUT WORTH IT

Since “Nicholas Nickleby” is about money, let us consider what it can and what it cannot buy. It can buy bouquets, such as were flung as the members of the Royal Shakespeare Company came out to take their bows after performing “Nicholas” at the Ahmanson Theatre on Sunday. It cannot buy the kind of collective shout that went up at the same moment, as strong in the balcony as in the orchestra.

That was gratitude. This “Nicholas” earns it. Sunday’s opening was a theatrical journey the likes of which this reviewer has not taken before, not even when the original company opened on Broadway five years ago. That was glorious, but it was also work . This “Nicholas” is pure pleasure.

As before, it takes 8 1/2 hours for the actors to tell us the story. (Plus an hour’s break for dinner: See story below.)

But this time, you lose track of the time. Rather than a marathon, this “Nicholas” suggests a journey by some such leisured conveyance as a stagecoach or omnibus. (The kind of vehicle Nicholas and his friends are always taking.) One can fight the journey or give in to it, realizing that the driver, Mr. Dickens, does know where he is going--he is simply taking the long way around, for scenic interest.

Too, there are the other passengers to study. Men and women do have a way of revealing themselves on a long journey. In this case, someone interesting (not necessarily someone admirable, or right in the head, but someone interesting) gets on at every stop. Bizarre as some of Mr. Dickens’ passengers are, they certainly seem to have lived very intense lives. When one steps down from the coach, one is almost sorry to be home.

In other words, this “Nicholas Nickleby” passes the seat-of-the-pants test. One gets caught up in it, as in a really absorbing novel. There is a dip in attention halfway through Part 2, perhaps inevitable at that stage of the evening, perhaps remediable. But the finish--one of those lavish Dickens Christmases, with something bitter at the bottom of the cup--is magnificent. Midnight already? Impossible.

It doesn’t hurt to go into this “Nicholas” with a general sense of the story. Nicholas (Michael Siberry) and his sister Kate (DeNica Fairman) are young people who come to London with their widowed mother (Frances Cuka) to seek the protection of their uncle, Ralph Nickleby (John Carlisle)--a man with even less heart than Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ralph ships Nicholas off to work at a disgraceful boys’ “school” run by the wonderfully loathsome Mr. and Mrs. Wackford Squeers (David Delve and Pat Keen). The youth befriends a crippled, feeble-minded lad named Smike (John Lynch)--whose image hangs over the play even after he leaves it.

Nicholas and Smike hit the road and join a tatty theatrical company run by the inimitable Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Crummles. (Tony Jay is Crummles, while Pat Keen, again, is his missus. Everybody in “Nicholas” plays at least two characters, and some play half a dozen.)

Meanwhile, Kate, too, has been shipped out to work. First, she’s a milliner’s assistant, then a lady’s companion. Her worst trial is the unwanted attentions of Sir Mulberry Hawk (Clive Wood), a wretch whom we can’t wait to see Nicholas throttle.

This summary leaves out dozens of subplots and secondary characters, including some that adapter David Edgar could easily have jettisoned, such as the madman who courts Nicholas’ mother (Raymond Platt) by throwing cucumbers over the wall. Still, there’s something Dickensian in the spendthrift quality of it. The real hero of the story is London, which for Dickens means life. How do you throw a net over London?

Edgar captures the teeming quality of the book while keeping us fairly straight as to the plot, culminating in Uncle Ralph’s deserved but tragic fate. The real tragedy here is that of the suffering poor, and Nicholas isn’t allowed to forget it in his Christmas joy--not that he would, anyway, being so good-hearted. But the viewer might.

“Nicholas” isn’t quite considered a masterpiece as a book. The stage version is just that, starting with the decision, way back in the development process, that the company would tell the story, more or less in Dickens’ words, as well as act it out. The RSC didn’t invent the technique--we call it Story Theater--but it has never been used on this scale, and it never seems a stunt.

An image that repeats and repeats: four or five of the company casually leaning on a bridge railing, watching the action below and throwing us a comment or two to help us understand what we’re seeing. The casualness suggests people in a village sharing some tale that they’ve lived for the benefit of a stranger, friendly-like.

But we never forget we’re in a theater. As real as the acting gets--and co-directors Trevor Nunn and John Caird keep it real, even when dealing with idealized emotions--the framework, masterfully structured by designer John Napier, is the steel rib cage of a theater: a place where these players are enacting this story for our pleasure.

Good as “Nicholas” was on TV, we missed that sense of participation. The sharing made for some wonderful absorbed silences on Sunday, and for some wonderful moments of laughter as well--family jokes, as it were. Yet the impulse to cheer Nicholas and to hiss Uncle Ralph sputtered out. This wasn’t popcorn melodrama, but true melodrama, with composer Steven Oliver responsible for the melos .

We believed in Nicholas and Kate and Squeers and Uncle Ralph--believed, at least, that at one time people really did feel and act so wholeheartedly in their cause, whether for good or evil. That’s a particular virtue of this company, which attacks the play in a simpler fashion than did the original troupe, without being any less vivid or well-spoken. (And, praise be, every word is clear at the Ahmanson, even upstairs.)

Where Roger Ress, the original Nicholas, gave us a young man with a certain amount of built-in Angst , Michael Siberry gives us a clear-eyed open young fellow who suffers the indignities of life very keenly, but can’t stay gloomy for long . Cheerfulness keeps breaking in. He’s a less interesting Nicholas, but a more lovable one, and probably closer to what Dickens had in mind.

As Uncle Ralph, John Carlisle is simpler, too, than his predecessor, John Woodvine. One is less inclined to psychoanalyze this Ralph Nickleby, more inclined simply to gasp at how cruel a really resolute man can be. And so on down the line, from John Lynch’s poor, stepped-on Smike, to Tony Jay’s Crummles, a ham so pure that he’s almost a saint.

The only point where this “Nicholas” falls below the standard set by the original company is Jane Carr’s Peg Sliderskew in Part 2. At that point we need a really a really frightening old hag, not a fake witch with a Fanny Squeers squeal. (Carr also plays Fanny and the beautiful Miss Snevellicci.)

But it’s laughable to think that a daily review can do justice to 510 minutes of theater, nearly all of them realized. Nobody should see this “Nicholas Nickleby” out of cultural duty. But do see it if you love Dickens and/or the theater. And if you can’t afford $100 for a downstairs seat, try the balcony for $30. In fact there’s more room up there to stretch your legs.

‘THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY’ David Edgar’s stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Ahmanson Theatre. Directors Trevor Nunn, John Caird. Setting John Napier. Costumes Andreane Neofitou. Lighting Chris Parry. Music and lyrics Stephen Oliver. Sound T. Richard Fitzgerald. With Michael Siberry, DeNica Fairman, Frances Cuka, John Carlisle, Hubert Rees, Alan Gill, George Raistrick, David Delve, Timothy Kightley, David Collings, Jane Whittenshaw, Eve Pearce, Jimmy Yuill, Karen Lancaster, Rebecca Saire, Allan Hendrick, Richard Simpson, Eve Pearce, Raymond Platt, Ian East, Jimmy Gardner, Alan David, Karen Archer, Jane Carr, Roderick Horn, Tony Jay, Pat Keen, Shirley King, John Lynch, Alison Rose, Simon Templeman, Bryan Torfeh, Clive Wood, Colin Campbell, Stephen Finlay, Caroline Ryder, Ruth Trouncer. Closes Aug. 3. Tickets $30-$100. Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 972-7402 or (213) 410-1062; group reservations (25 or more), (213) 972-7350.