DAVID COPPERFIELD. To 15 November.
Colchester.
DAVID COPPERFIELD
by Charles Dickens adapted by Giles Havergal.
Mercury Theatre To 15 November 2008.
Mon-~Sat 7.30pm Mat 13 Nov 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS: 01206 573948.
www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 November.
Works like a dream.
There’s an ingenuity to Giles Havergal’s version of Charles Dickens’ 900-pager that avoids the lumpy custard school of most adaptations. As grey-haired, reflective Tristram Wymark narrates then stands by watching fresh-faced young James Rowland develop from howling baby through stages of childhood to adult emotions, the forward motion of events becomes a train of memory, a waking dream of the past.
It has the vivid clarity of childhood impressions. When David first visits the Peggottys in Yarmouth, Zerlina Hughes’ lighting opens up the whole stage, identifying its jetty and masts, backed by an impressive 19th-century harbour view (designer: Adam Wiltshire).
Memories and experience eventually acquire emotional weight for both Davids; for the older one this begins when Uriah Heep first threatens Agnes. Adulthood brings a collision of memories, mixing with the sharp fluidity of keen recall. The dead Dora sits in a warm pool of light as the living crash coldly into David’s consciousness. So does an image from across the years, as David’s schoolboy hero is discovered lying dead exactly as he’d lain asleep in the dorm.
Havergal suggests the erotic impulses Dickens withholds, in David’s admiration of Steerforth or Aunt Betsey Trotwood’s lone life. But indication never bursts into inappropriate or story-tampering excess.
Hughes’ lighting with contrasting pools or open breadth create the dark and light in Dickens, while Richard Taylor’s woodwind and soft brass dominated score tactfully establish atmosphere, sinister, comic or gentle. And like Havergal's technical collaborators, each actor is seen at their best.
As in the contrast between Ignatius Anthony’s oily, sinister Murdstone and Miranda Bell’s black-clad, severe but benign Betsey, or Gina Isaac doubling David’s increasingly depressed mother with the younger, serene if troubled, Agnes. David Tarkenter has the raucous good-nature of a kind man used to combating the ocean’s decibels, while Kerry Gooderson etches the mix of happy and uncontrolled in Emily, running around the stage or glancing back at Steerforth when she leaves. Tony Casement, with hair-oil to out-grease Murdstone’s, is an eerily unpleasant black blot wheedling around the scene, a contrast to the extravagant gesture and voice in Tim Treslove’s Micawber.
David 1: Tristram Wymark.
David 2: James Rowland.
Betsey Trotwood: Miranda Bell.
Peggotty: Christine Absalom.
Mrs Copperfield/Agnes: Gina Isaac.
Mr Murdstone: Ignatius Anthony.
Ham: Tomos James.
Dan Peggotty: David Tarkenter.
Emily: Kerry Gooderson.
Steerforth: Pete Ashmore.
Mr Micawber: Tim Treslove.
Mrs Micawber: Lorna McDevitt.
Uriah Heep: Tony Casement.
Mr Wickfield: Roger Delves-Broughton.
Dora: Kate Copeland.
Children: Spencer Griffiths, Nathan White, Max Hayden-Case, Claudia White, Lillie Barnett/Joseph Cowie, Piers Bolton, Lewis Ward, Isabella Sparsi, Lucy Hemmings.
Director: Giles Havergal.
Designer: Adam Wiltshire.
Lighting: Zerlina Hughes.
Sound: Marcus Christensen.
Composer: Richard Taylor.
Dialectcoach: Jo Cameron Brown.
2008-11-12 06:08:15