The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (play) reception was enthusiastic, critical reception was mixed. Frank Rich in "New York Times" reported dull passages piling up as "dead weight", while John Simon in the "New York Magazine" felt that the work was a "middlebrow enterprise" doing "scant justice" to the novel. In contrast Mel Gussow, again in "The New York Times", noted that ""Nicholas Nickleby" remains true to Dickens – many of the lines are taken directly from the novel, dialogue as well as narration – and to first principles of theater" when describing the RSC's recast production in 1986. Playwright and reviewer Thomas Hischak, writing in retrospect
Emily Richard 1982 Richard appeared in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" at the Donmar Warehouse in London with Ian McKellen, Edward Petherbridge and Edward Hardwicke. For the Royal Shakespeare Company Richard appeared in Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" (April 1980) at the Donmar Warehouse with Roger Rees, Edward Petherbridge, Bob Peck and Timothy Spall; and as Kate Nickleby in "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" (November 1980) at the Aldwych Theatre, an epic eight-hour stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel "Nicholas Nickleby" with Roger Rees, Timothy Spall, John Woodvine, Edward Petherbridge, Ben Kingsley, Fulton Mackay, David Threlfall, Bob Peck, Rose Hill and Christopher Benjamin.