Hard Times at Oldham Coliseum
by Stephen Jeffreys adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens
Reviewed by John Waterhouse and John Gormally May 2017
The novels of Charles Dickens have an almost timeless appeal. Each new generation continues to relate the sufferings and travails of his protagonists to the injustices and wrongs of their own world. It may also be said that only William Shakespeare can equal Dickens in giving us across his various works such a broad range of characters who remain familiar to us, demonstrating both admirable virtues and all too human failings. How many other writers other than Shakespeare and Dickens have given their names to the actual times they lived in.