"Tale of Two Cities' at People's Light

A visit to Charles Dickens's world can be a very satisfying experience. In his best novels, the characters are incredibly vivid. The stories unfold as gracefully as a spring flower, and then the various plot threads dovetail beautifully, the way they almost never do in real life. It's undeniably an artificial world, but rich, full and colorful.

This narrative momentum may explain why Dickens novels adapt to stage and screen more effectively and entertainingly than those of most other major novelists. Occasionally"“ as in the Royal Shakespeare Company's adaptation of Nicholas Nickelby and David Lean's films of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist "“ they're memorable works in their own right. Dwayne Hartford's dramatization of A Tale of Two Cities, currently playing at People's Light & Theatre Company, isn't in that class, but it's an enjoyable evening of theater.

In case you haven't encountered A Tale of Two Cities since high school English class, the plot revolves around a romantic triangle set against the turbulence of the French Revolution. In 1780s England, the attractive Lucie Manette is pursued by two men: Sydney Carton, an irresponsible lawyer with a drinking problem, and Charles Darnay, a French nobleman who has renounced his debauched family. Lucie chooses Darnay, though it turns out his father and uncle had been responsible for imprisoning her father in the Bastille for 18 years. When revolution breaks out in France, it's open season on all aristocrats.

Nevertheless, Darnay returns to Paris to save an old tutor and falls into the revolutionaries' hands. From there, the plot twists include hairbreadth escapes and a supreme act of noble self-sacrifice. What romantic could ask for anything more?

Hartford does a commendable job of paring the novel down to its essentials. One might quibble here and there "“ the murder of Darnay's uncle is weighed down with extraneous dialogue that undermines the scene's tension"“ but on the whole, this is an effective adaptation.

Under Ken Marini's capable direction, the People's Light ensemble, many playing multiple roles, bring many Dickensian people to life. I especially enjoyed Kevin Bergen, who makes plausible Carton's metamorphosis from wastrel to hero; Mary Elizabeth Scallen, who's suitably fearsome as Madame DeFarge, the most memorable of Dickens villainesses; and Marcia Saunders, who, as Lucy's lady in waiting, proves once again that she's one of our area's finest character actresses.

James F. Pyne's two-deck set, connected by multiple staircases, manages to suggest a myriad of locales, and Pyne and Marini make imaginative use of back projections and silhouettes.

While Oliver Twist has been adapted well many times"“ most recently by Roman Polanski— no one has attempted a version of A Tale of Two Cities on the epic scale the story really deserves since David O. Selznick took a crack at it back in 1935. Perhaps it's time for Steven Spielberg to take notice. In the meantime, the People's Light's production provides an entertaining primer to the book.