Actress Brings Dickens’ Women to Life : Theater: Miriam Margolyes, who plays about 15 characters in ‘Lovely Wooman,’ has a love/hate relationship with the tormented author.

“I really do love him--although he makes me very angry,” said British actress Miriam Margolyes of her attachment to Charles Dickens. “I mean, he’s a great genius, a passionate man, full of humor, so wise and funny and naughty. Of course, he’s dead. But he’s not just any old dead person; he’s Charles Dickens. And I’d rather spend my time with him--dead though he is--than a lot of people who are living.”

And spend time with him she does. In “Wooman, Lovely Wooman, What a Sex You Are!” (at the Tiffany Theatre), the actress introduces audiences to 15 female characters in Dickens’ work. Yet ironically, it’s his male chauvinism that most annoys her about her subject. “We all have to fight for our place in the world,” she said firmly. “Dickens had power and he didn’t like giving it up.”

Within these characters, she feels, is a psychological primer on their creator. “There are two underlying themes,” Margolyes noted. “One is that Dickens was much, much more tormented than people realize. They think of him as the inventor of Christmas, a jolly family man. Well, he wasn’t. He was actually incredibly unhappy most of his life, in deep despair.

“The other thing I wanted to show was how the women in these works inter-relate, because I think it makes it sharper for people,” she added of the show, which made an auspicious debut last summer at the Edinburgh Festival. “You think, ‘Aha! That woman was that woman.’ The women in his life influenced the women in the books; they come out of reality, out of the things that happened to him.” (The show’s title is taken from a quote--by ballet master Mr. Turveydrop--in “Bleak House.”)

The production focuses on women to the extent that a man’s role, which was announced as being played by Ben Robertson, has now been dropped.

Nestled in her rented Santa Monica ocean-view condominium, Margolyes is quick, friendly and no-nonsense; she takes in stride the British-American gap in understanding, including the notion that local audiences may not be very well-versed in this literary realm.

“We’ve had to adapt (the show) to Americans, no question about it,” she noted, tucking her legs under her and peering towards the balcony. “This is another country, and the things we take for granted, that are part of our folk history, just aren’t as familiar to an American audience.” Meaning? “The American attention span is basically 20 minutes,” Margolyes said bluntly. “So we’ve kept all of the characters fairly short. “

She turned her Ray-Bans on her visitor. “But I don’t want to patronize the audience. I don’t want to talk down to them--because I don’t feel like that about America. I just hope there are people who know who Charles Dickens is; I assume there are.” She paused. “I think the major tragedy of the modern world is the lack of education in America. But I won’t patronize people. I believe we all read these books as kids . . . well, in England, we do.”

She especially. “I grew up in Oxford, which is an academic town,” the actress explained. Her father was a doctor, her mother dabbled in real estate--a hobby she passed on to Margolyes. (She has houses in London, Australia, Italy and the coast of England.)

Acting was also nurtured by her mother. “She had wanted to be an actress, so she supported me,” Margolyes recalled. “And I was just a natural show-off, always, from the cradle. I remember making up little plays as I walked to school, and playing all the characters.” After Cambridge University came lots of radio work (“I think it’s an extraordinarily sophisticated medium”), stage and TV roles, and in 1988, the part of Flora Finching in the acclaimed film “Little Dorrit.”

Suddenly, life changed. “As soon as people saw ‘Little Dorrit’ in the rough cut and told me what an impact I was making, I thought, ‘This is the one to go for,’ she said briskly. “So I came here, got myself a publicist, got on the Johnny Carson show and, you know, I hustled. I am enormously courageous. And I have nothing to lose. I know I’m a bloody good actress, and I’m going to give it a go.”

Her new agent thought producer Norman Lear might like to meet her, and indeed he did. A series--mum’s the word on anything about that, she said--is in development; she’ll begin shooting this fall. (Lear’s company is also financing this show.) Meanwhile, Margolyes can look forward to the release of Lawrence Kasdan’s “I Love You to Death,” in which she plays Kevin Kline’s mother, and the upcoming TNT cable taping of “Orpheus Descending,” a Vanessa Redgrave-starrer she played in the West End in ’89.

“I haven’t turned my back on England,” she stressed. “You work where you get the job. I’m a mercenary, an actress for hire. At the moment, people want me in America. And it’s thrilling. Here I am, this 48-year-old fat Jewish lady . . . so to come here and have a career, find that people want me--well, it’s been an extraordinary experience. Because its unexpected. It’s like being a kid, like starting all over again.”