EMILY DICKINSON & I
REVIEWS
‘Emily Dickinson & I leaves you with the realization and the belief that in a world scarred by violence and betrayal, extraordinary beauty still abounds.’ ***** SEE Magazine, Edmonton , Canada
‘A courageous and very personal look at life and death, commitment to art and love…. Campbell’s delivery of both the poems and portions of the letters…is absolutely flawless. ’ ***** Edmonton Journal, Canada
‘This strikingly original and carefully woven theatre piece is… refreshing and genuine… consummate and touching… a production of rare integrity, neither puffing up nor romanticising a literary figure, that impresarios and academics might have thought they owned.’ **** Critics’ Choice, The Scotsman
‘Precise, intelligent and passionate . . . In the final moments of this wonderful 90 minutes, she does achieve a kind of transcendence and both performer and audience come as close to the soul of the poet as we probably ever will. **** Edmonton Sun, Canada
‘In seconds any threats of self-indulgence hovering over this one-woman paean are vanquished… Campbell’s performance is ingenuous in spirit and well-crafted in form… Jack Lynch directs Campbell with lucidity.’ THE STAGE
‘Edie Campbell is absolutely compelling… she expertly highlights what it means to be truly in love with literature… Jack Lynch’s direction borders on the serene while Sebastian Williams’ lighting design is an object lesson in theatrical subtlety. A warm and delicious paean to the bibliophile in us all – a work of sincere maturity.’ **** THE LIST
‘Campbell is electric… subtly charismatic… affecting honesty of this plain delivery… the structural finesse of [her] co-creation with director Jack Lynch… .’ TIME OUT
‘Campbell is passionate about Dickinson’s words-both poetry and prose-and she shares this passion with the audience, juxtaposing episodes from her own life with Dickinson’s work to create a remarkable piece that delves deeply into its own creation.’ ****1/2-STARS VUE Weekly, Canada
‘…poignant and serious – it’s an uplifting and memorable evening that holds one’s attention throughout… I recommend it unreservedly.’ Margaret Drabble, Hot tickets, Evening Standard
‘…her sincerity and passion for the poet make her ideas refreshing and strikingly original… Campbell is a fine story-teller… brutally honest… The play is the perfect balance of historical fact, Campbell’s emotional input and Dickinson’s own work… Its spirit was inspiring and Campbell’s passion contagious.’ Evening Argus, Brighton
‘a master class in the art of performance… No concessions to populism, but a thoughtful and entertaining insight into a brilliant mind.’ Western Daily Press
‘this play is a wonderful exercise in discovery… [it] captures a world of emotions with elegance, simplicity and a touch of humor.’ Cedar Rapids Gazette, USA
‘The show is sometimes comical, often poignant, and ultimately an emotionally moving experience… Campbell is hopeful, ironic, frustrated, charming, lonely and curious by turn.’ Quad-City Times, USA
‘strikingly original…’ WRITERS’ NEWS
‘The play is fascinating… captivating… an evening that commands attention.’ Wandsworth Borough News
Note: Emily Dickinson & I was originally titled My Life Has Stood
FULL REVIEWS
***** SEE Magazine, Edmonton, Canada 22 August 2005, Erik De Waal
This is a play about prolific poetess Emily Dickinson; it’s a play about writing a play about Dickinson; and, ultimately, it’s a very personal glimpse into the soul of an ordinary woman whose emotions are reflected and given life through the beautiful words of Dickinson, gaining a resonance that transcends the ordinary and joyfully celebrates the fact that every life is extraordinary. Jack Lynch and Edie Campbell crafted a remarkable piece of art. Campbell’s unflinching honesty and deep respect for Dickinson imbue this quiet tour de force with such emotional depth and layers of truth that we cannot help but be seduced by both subjects of this tender, funny and poignant portrait. Campbell is a master of her craft. She effortlessly weaves a tapestry so rich in detail, love and emotional nuance that it dazzles the mind and the senses. Emily Dickinson & I leaves you with the realization and the belief that in a world scarred by violence and betrayal, extraordinary beauty still abounds.
‘Having a ball with the Belle of Amherst’ ***** The Edmonton Journal, Canada, 20 August 2005, Marc Horton
At one point in this remarkable one-woman production, actress Edie Campbell wonders aloud whether there is ever going to be a play at all in the life of Emily Dickinson, the 19th-century reclusive poet whose work has echoed through American letters.
Indeed there is. And it is a very, very good one, written by Campbell and her husband Jack Lynch, both of the United Kingdom by way of Iowa City, Iowa.
And those whose only impression of Dickinson comes from some force-fed verse during a high school English course should take note. The Belle of Amherst, Mass., may not have been a party girl but she was a genius with wit, humour and, it should go without saying, a profound insight into the human heart.
While Dickinson may not have made you laugh back then, she will now. This uniquely structured play tells much of Dickinson’s life using her own poetry and letters — she wrote an astonishing 1,775 poems, only seven of which were published in her lifetime, and was a voluminous letter writer as well — but also speaks of Campbell’s own search to discover the “real” Emily. Campbell’s delivery of both the poems and portions of the letters — one of which describes the death of a local soldier in a Civil War battle is deeply moving — is absolutely flawless.
By weaving her own story in with that of Dickinson’s, she is clearly taking a chance the effect will be one of shameless self-indulgence as she discusses her first failed marriage and the sad death of her father from a disease not unlike Alzheimer’s.
To her credit and that of co-author and director Lynch there is none of that here. What you have, instead, is a courageous and very personal look at life and death, commitment to art and love.
Dickinson once rather famously enjoined us all to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant.”
This is a life told slant. Emily would probably have approved.
****½ VUE Weekly, Edmonton, Canada, 25 August 2005, Eden Munro
For much of its ninety minutes, Emily Dickinson & I seems to barely exist; in fact, that nonexistence is exactly what it’s about on the surface, as Edie Campbell recounts her years-long effort to write a play about Emily Dickinson. At its heart, though, this is a tale about creation, and a challenging one at that. Campbell is passionate about Dickinson’s words-both poetry and prose-and she shares this passion with the audience, juxtaposing episodes from her own life with Dickinson’s work to create a remarkable piece that delves deeply into its own creation.
‘Emulating Emily – Single-minded obsession pays off for actress Campbell’ **** Edmonton Sun, Canada, 25 August 25 2005, Colin MacLean
Emily Dickinson, we learn from this lively and engrossing play, was almost unknown and nearly unpublished in her own lifetime.
Since her death, she has come to be regarded, along with Walt Whitman, as one of the two great American poets of the 19th century. She was reclusive – living nearly her whole life in the Dickinson homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts. For 15 years she never ventured outside her home. Beyond the basic facts, and the incredible richness of her poems and letters, little is known of her.
If we are to believe her, writer/performer Edie Campbell has spent much of her life trying to write a play about the poet. We follow as her life becomes the focus of her story. Oh my, this is dangerous territory. How easily this could become precious and self-indulgent – “I have this play about a poet but it’s really about me, me, me.”
But Campbell skillfully weaves the story of Dickinson through her own life and the two women, living in different centuries, take us on a journey with them. Dickinson’s words illuminate the dark and point the way. The poet’s life confounds and fascinates the actress as she pursues her career, moves from England to Iowa, gets married, divorced and becomes painfully aware of the mortality of her own mother and father. “I am infatuated – obsessed with Emily Dickinson,” she tells us. Her words express my feelings as I never could.”
Campbell’s years as a professional actress are obvious on stage. She is precise, intelligent and passionate. She changes voice and slides easily into various characters. Her pedantic teacher with overhead slides is a hoot. She obviously venerates Dickinson, but when she says her words, they tumble form her as if from the agile mind of the Belle of Amherst herself. It is surprising how current and modern the 175-year-old poet is.
Says the co-author (with her husband Jack Lynch), “Ever since I first met Emily I have wanted to be her. Portray her. No! Be her.”
In the final moments of this wonderful 90 minutes, she does achieve a kind of transcendence and both performer and audience come as close to the soul of the poet as we probably ever will.
‘The ultimate play about the life of Emily Dickinson’ **** THE LIST, 24 August 2000, Paul Dale
This is really a Radio 4 play writ large – wilfully middle class and highbrow, it is still a fascinating look at one individual’s obsession with the Belle of Amherst and her ethereal body of work.
Edie Campbell is absolutely compelling as an actress in the process of writing a homage to her heroine. Drawing a contrast between her own life and that of Dickinson’s she expertly highlights what it means to be truly in love with literature. My Life Has Stood takes Alan Bennett’s Talking Head monologues as a template, and it has to be said that Campbell’s control of tone and pace is almost as strong as that of the Governor. She weaves a web of adolescent frustration, longing and hero worship around her audience, and you leave the auditorium determined to get yourself down to Waterstone’s to invest in a copy of Dickinson’s Letters and Poems.
Jack Lynch’s direction borders on the serene while Sebastian Williams’ lighting design is an object lesson in theatrical subtlety. A warm and delicious paean to the bibliophile in us all, if you love Dickinson you will love this – a work of sincere maturity.
**** Critic’s Choice, The Scotsman, 10 August 2000, Bonnie Lee
This strikingly original and carefully woven theatre piece is playwright-performer, Edie Campbell’s account of her search for material about the 19th century New England poet, Emily Dickinson. As parts of the refreshing and genuine story of Campbell’s own life are presented, the real Dickinson also unfolds. By the end, Dickinson is in the ascendant, Campbell having turned wholly into Emily by donning the white costume we are told Dickinson always wore from the time her father died.
This sounds a bit Jekyll and Hyde, but it’s not – it’s consummate and touching. The strapline on the programme, “A one-woman play about the process of writing, acting and getting into Emily Dickinson’s dress”, does not give any idea of how expertly Campbell turns a reclusive spinster from a bygone day into the strong-minded philosopher, rugged individualist and delicious ironist that she clearly was.
The search that Campbell made was for “the real Emily, the undiluted Emily, our Emily”, and for a means of being Dickinson’s mouthpiece “without getting in her way”.
Theatre veterans should enjoy Campbell’s description of how she was repeatedly told, on both sides of the Atlantic, “Yes, but you haven’t got a play.” My Life Has Stood is a production of rare integrity, neither puffing up nor romanticising a literary figure, that impresarios and academics might have thought they owned.
TIME OUT, 29 August 2001, Sarah Adams
Yes, a one-woman show about creating a one-woman show does sound as if it might be inclined towards the navel. But that’s before you’ve witnessed Edie Campbell’s subtly charismatic performance, or taken into account the fact that Emily Dickinson, the notoriously reclusive nineteenth-century poet from Massachusetts, is no ordinary subject matter.
Dickinson’s voice is both deeply unsettling and challenging (‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant’). It can be giddy with inebriation or chilly with gloom. With only seven poems published in her lifetime, she leaves a legacy of 1775 poems, 1,049 letters, and (as Campbell points out) 5,000 internet links. It’s taken 14 years to condense this material into an audience-friendly format. Seamlessly, Campbell slips in and out of the parallels and asymmetries between the ‘Belle of Amherst’ and her own life: Emily’s intense need to embrace solitude is mirrored, for example, by Campbell’s chronic panic attacks in public places. It’s against the background of Campbell’s divorce that we hear Emily’s simultaneously self-effacing and quizzical remark: ‘All men say “What?” to me’. And as the biographical becomes autobiographical, it’s a curious pun that Emily’s initials ED (as used for editorial purposes) should echo Campbell’s own name, Edie.
‘Put it on Radio 4, in installments,’ Campbell’s friends advised her when her work-in-progress came down from a whopping nine hours to an anorexic 45 minutes. If they overlooked the structural finesse of Campbell’s co-creation with director Jack Lynch and the affecting honesty of this plain delivery, there are times when an under-visualised, overzealous tone is allowed to creep in. But Campbell is electric when she follows Dickinson’s nose for danger: ‘That’s what they call a metaphor in our country. Don’t be afraid of it, sir, it won’t bite.’ And when she finally puts on the white dress she’s been pinning, tacking and ironing throughout, the transformation is uncanny: this ‘journey of a portrayal’ has a richly suggestive arrival.
THE STAGE, 6 September 2001, Alexa Baracaia
“There she is!” Edie Campbell declares, dumping a hefty pile of papers at her feet. In seconds, any threats of self-indulgence hovering over this one-woman paean to poet and belle of Amherst, Emily Dickinson, are vanquished.
It is with winning simplicity that Campbell weaves a tale of an actress’s bid to dramatise the life of her literary heroine. Sat among the books, annotated letters and fat manuscript of a monster first draft, she confides her obsession with a good dose of self-irony and happy absence of pretension – “I am an actress, I am not a playwright… so what am I trying to do?”
After 14 years in the making, what Campbell has mustered is the low-key dramatisation of two biographies.
Her own experiences and struggle to write become a neat device to explore the life and works of the poetess to which she has long been in thrall, while solving the riddle of how to keep Dickinson’s voice distinct from her own.
With wry humour she spoofs her fantasist conviction – swiftly dismantled, though ever-seductive – that she is the 19th century poetess reincarnated (“Edie, Emily Dickinson. ED. It’s obvious!”) and assumes the brisk accents of a prissy school-ma’am to ease us entertainingly through the requisite Dickinson chronology.
Criss-crossing from caricature to straight recitals of poems and letters, through frank and informal accounts of her own various crises and oddities, Campbell’s performance is ingenuous in spirit and well-crafted in form.
Co-creator Jack Lynch directs Campbell with lucidity and a methodical hand which allows the actress’s devotion to her subject to shine through without surfeit, inspiring the enthusiasm of her audience.
The Evening Standard Hot Tickets, 16 August 2001: Margaret Drabble on Emily Dickinson & I
I saw Emily Dickinson & I at Guildford before last year’s Edinburgh Festival where it received such excellent notices. Obviously it’s about Emily Dickinson, who was a well-known recluse, but it also deals with the actress’s own attempt to write a play about her heroine, so the two themes are intermingled. It’s a wonderful story – very captivating, and extremely well thought out.
The actress is Edie Campbell, who I have a personal interest in because she was at Oxford with my daughter. She wrote the play herself but uses pertinent letters and poems for illustration. It’s directed by Jack Lynch, her partner. There’s an extraordinary transformation towards the end when she seems to age and become Emily Dickinson. The lighting is vital for that scene. We also saw it in Somerset House at the Royal Society of Literature, where they didn’t have appropriate lighting but it was still powerful. Edie is from North America so there are no problems with accents, she carries all that off perfectly. I think she’s a star in the making, especially as this is an intense one-woman piece, and her performance is marvelous. We went with a lot of friends, all of whom were impressed. The play is extremely funny in parts, at other times poignant and serious – it’s an uplifting and memorable evening that holds one’s attention throughout. It is apparent that the actress loves and has studied her subject, and she throws interesting light on the poet’s life. I recommend it unreservedly.
‘Poetry reveals parallel lines’ The Evening Argus, Brighton, 21 September 2000, Jakki Phillips
When I sat down to watch Edie Campbell’s one-woman show My Life Has Stood I knew nothing about the American poet Emily Dickinson, other than that she was American and a poet. An hour or so later, I walked away with her life story and her words echoing in my mind. From ignorance I was introduced to Emily, the poet, the recluse, the genius, the mad woman and the myth.
But while learning about the 19th Century New England writer, who penned thousands of poems and letters, we also learned about the actress who stood before us. My Life Has Stood charts the real-life story of Campbell’s love affair with Dickinson’s work and her struggle to write a play which reflects ‘the real Emily, the undiluted Emily, our Emily’.
Campbell carefully weaves her world in and out of Dickinson’s. Dickinson’s initials are ED, Campbell’s name is Edie, Dickinson suffers panic attacks, so does Campbell, Dickinson’s father died and so did Campbell’s — the links go on. This may sound as though Campbell is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic but her sincerity and passion for the poet make her ideas refreshing and strikingly original. The actress discusses the possibility she may be the reincarnation of Emily and believes she is on a life mission to conquer Emily’s failings. She talks us through a variety of amusing and endearing examples, which include straining to love housework and refusing to learn the piano. With an air of humour and fun she takes us on a search for the root of her Emily fixation.
Campbell is a fine story-teller who discusses her life, the breakup of her marriage, her father’s death and her obsession with Dickinson in a brutally honest fashion. The play is the perfect balance of historical fact, Campbell’s emotional input and Dickinson’s own work.
My Life Has Stood is a touching although thankfully not gushing play, quite rightly awarded a four-star review by The Scotsman during the Edinburgh Festival. Its spirit was inspiring and Campbell’s passion contagious. I suspect there will be a lot of Dickinson’s poetry sold in the next couple of days.
‘Poet’s masterclass’ Western Daily Press, 21 October 2004, Harry Motram
For 90 minutes Edie Campbell held the audience’s attention with a seamless performance as she unravelled the life of Emily Dickinson.
The journey of a portrayal was part of the Bristol Poetry Festival – an event I’m sure the 19th-century American poet would have approved of.
The one-woman play, devised by Edie Campbell and Jack Lynch, had Emily Dickinson’s white dress as its central symbol. The actress gave an autobiographical account of her own journey of discovery of the poet’s life.
As she did so she recited the concise and image-loaded lines that reflected the moods and thoughts (mainly about love and relationships) that the hermit-like poet had written in the solitude of her bedroom.
Students of drama would have found this portrayal a master class in the art of performance. Clear precise diction, excellent poise and exquisite timing. No concessions to populism, but a thoughtful and entertaining insight into a brilliant mind.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette, 2 March 2002, Marcella Lee
For those in the audience who, like this reviewer, are vaguely familiar with Dickinson ’s works but lack intimate knowledge or depth of understanding of her quirky, beautiful, sometimes abstruse art, this play is a wonderful exercise in discovery.
Campbell has long been fascinated by the life and works of Dickinson and does a marvellous job of portraying the New England recluse as she excerpts several of Dickinson’s poems and letters.
The letters are especially revealing of the woman’s remarkable command of the English language, as well as of her personal prejudices and longings.
The title of the play, “Emily Dickinson & I,” gives a clue to another aspect of the drama. As she peruses the life of Dickinson, Campbell is led to look at her own life, perceiving parallels therein.
The play becomes touchingly autobiographical as Campbell switches from the words of Dickinson to reminiscences of her own past.
Campbell is a highly skilled, sensitive actor who in 90 minutes captures a world of emotions with elegance, simplicity and even at times a touch of humor. One cannot help but feel that the real Emily Dickinson would have approved of her portrayal.
‘Captivating story and performance create emotional one-woman show’ Quad-City Times, USA, 2 March 2002, Ruby Nancy
“Emily Dickinson and I: the Journey of a Portrayal” is a one-woman show about an actress who wants to write a play about her favorite poet. Billed as a “devised work,” this play is about Emily Dickinson, but it’s equally about the actress, Edie Campbell, who struggled for years to develop a script that would do justice to the poet she admired.
The resulting show is often autobiographical: Edie simply compares and contrasts her own life with what she knows of Emily’s. The results are sometimes comical, often poignant, and ultimately are an emotionally moving experience.
You don’t need to love Dickinson’s poetry to “get” this show, or even know very much about her work, but those who do will have an additional layer of appreciation of “Emily.”
The script and style of the show are strong elements, and director/co-creator Jack Lynch (Campbell’s husband) certainly shares the credit for the material as well as the way it is presented, though he does not appear on stage. Lighting designer Sebastian Williams also makes an impact here, with subtle but evocative work that perfectly enhances every line.
As an audience, though, it is Campbell’s strong work that we really see. Mostly first-person narrative, with short impressions interspersed on occasion, “Emily” is 90 minutes of an engaging story told by an equally engaging performer. Campbell works on some sewing, talks about her father, shares the experience of a panic attack, reads some of her favorite poems, and weaves all of this and more into a coherent whole. She is hopeful, ironic, frustrated, charming, lonely and curious by turn, and she moves easily through all these and more as she shares her life and work with us.
Clearly Lynch and Campbell make a good team, and it is equally obvious that she is a wonderfully gifted performer.
“Emily” is more than these things, I think. Campbell gives us heart and soul, sweat and tears, love and loss. This is the journey of a woman into full adulthood, into full certainty of herself as an artist, into full acceptance of life and all its imperfections. She takes us there, and we are glad.
‘Fringe benefits’ WRITERS’ NEWS, May 2001
When an actress decided to write a one-woman play about her favourite poet Emily Dickinson, she found herself on an unexpected journey: was it a biographical or autobiographical portrayal?
Playwright-performer Edie Campbell’s strikingly original piece is an account of her search for material about the 19th century writer who penned thousands of poems and letters. My Life Has Stood charts the real-life story of Campbell’s love affair with Dickinson’s work and her struggle to write a play that reflects ‘the real Emily, the undiluted Emily, our Emily.’ Campbell describes how she was repeatedly told, on both sides of the Atlantic: ‘Yes, but you haven’t got a play.’ A successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August – garnering two four-star reviews – proves that she has got a play and a good one at that.
THE STAGE, 10 August 2000, Thom Dibdin
Actress Edie Campbell has spent the last 14 years with a quiet obsession for Emily Dickinson, America’s finest female poet, mythical recluse and prolific correspondent. And for most of that time, Campbell has been striving to bring a play about Dickinson to the stage.
Unable to separate her own character from that of her subject, Campbell eventually decided to tell her own story of discovery. It is not quite the biographical play she envisaged, perhaps, but it works extremely well as an introduction to the life and work of this fine wordsmith and hyper-intelligent woman.
[Campbell] has the measure of Dickinson’s poetry and her often witty and pointed letters… LynchPin Productions has achieved much, being faithful to both the spirit and words of Emily Dickinson.
‘Obsession makes for a compulsive night’ Wandsworth Borough News, 31 August 2001, Paul Nelson
The play is fascinating. It is a personal account of a woman obsessed with Emily Dickinson, and being an actress, desperately trying to create both a vehicle for herself and a paean of praise for the poet by whom she is fascinated.
She does give a most complete performance that made me feel I was alone with her and the entire evening was for me – the house was full by the way. She is an attractive performer with a dazzling array of styles of attack.
The play itself, although autobiographical, has been adapted from her own passion by Jack Lynch. He directs with a sure hand and has attractively staged the play, which is brilliantly lit by Seb Williams.
Edie Campbell captivated me from the start and kept up the magic right through to the quite moving yet simple ending.
It is not a gentle ramble through someone’s life, it is an evening that commands attention and that led, quite naturally, to enormous appreciation and applause. Go.