David Edgar's 1980 adaptation of Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby was a huge and memorable success as presented under Trevor Nunn and John Caird's direction in an eight-and-a-half-hour marathon by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, London and New York. It set the trend for many similar productions - none as long, none as sucessful - in which celebrated novels, not all Victorian, were brought to the stage in ensemble style.

Now there is a chance to see this influential paradigm again, in the slightly shortened version Edgar devised last year for the Chichester Festival Theatre. Having been on a brief tour since then - I caught it last week at Milton Keynes - it is now playing at the Gielgud Theatre in London until January 27 (0870 9500915). It is divided into two parts, but there are various opportunities to see the whole thing in one day. This is a course I wholeheartedly recommend, confident that no one could fail to be gripped by this thrilling seven hours of theatre, to which the wonderful, eclectic music of the late Stephen Oliver makes an important contribution.

The beauty of the play is that it so successfuly captures the Dickensian spirit. This is achieved not just in an accurate depiction of the people and places he presented on the page - from the grim horror of Dotheboys Hall to the salons of cultured London - but in setting before us something of the moral framework he drew on in their creation. More than this, we see more than a glimpse of Dickens the man.

Throughout the show one can never forget that he was famously a lover of theatre himself - indeed, it was his compulsion to give live performances of his own works that arguably killed him. How he would have loved the gloriously comic version of Romeo and Juliet as performed at the close of Part I of the play by Vincent Crummles (Jonathan Coy) and his troupe! The absurdly upbeat ending supplied here - with the star-crossed lovers living happily ever after, along with everyone else - is not, however, going to be emulated in the story of Nicholas (the truly excellent Daniel Weyman). For while right certainly triumphs, evil - as exemplified by his wicked uncle Ralph (David Yelland) and the hellish schoolmaster Wackford Squeers (Pip Donaghy) - will nonetheless have its victims. Most notable among these is the shamefully abused Smike, who is given a brilliant, tear-inducing portrayal by the excellent David Dawson.