GREAT EXPECTATIONS. To 10 April.
Manchester
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
by Charles Dickens adapted by James Maxwell and the Royal Exchange Theatre Company
Royal Exchange Theatre To 10 April 2004
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 3hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 April
A hurtling pace over 3 hours is best when it gives room to characters.Expectations had frankly been lowered by the time I caught this final midweek matinee, some harsh things having been said in reviews. But with tightened playing shaving the running time almost down to 3 hours, a well-filled theatre showed there's an appetite for staged classic novels. At least it saves waiting for Andrew Davies' TV adaptation.
But shoehorning it all into even a long evening still means a storytelling dash that restricts the Dickensian mood, meaning even strongly-played moments Rebecca Charles' Molly reluctantly showing her wrists as her stubbornness is subdued by Jaggers, for example can't resonate as they should through a story whose ends, tied briskly together, seem over-arbitrary.
This revision of James Maxwell's 20-year old Exchange version justifies hurtling through events by seeing them through the mind of the older Pip, first met when about to be borne off by sickness and debt. This gives a context for the moments of heightened theatricality, though they're still hardly integrated into an overall style. Occasionally, as when judgmental voices accuse Pip from round the theatre, such moments carry a frisson, but mostly they come over as contrived, or as simply not matching the imaginative and technical quality available in today's physical and visual imagery-rich theatre.
It's even more so with theatrical moments on a realistic plane perfunctory dance episodes or, most obviously, the fire at Satis House. A few sparks, red light and Una Stubbs' Miss Havisham whirling for all she's worth can't match Dickens' prose evocation.
It's when focusing on character and relationships that things go best. Oliver Dimsdale does well-enough by Pip, while Charlotte Emmerson has a dry-mannered presence, the sense of someone existing outside herself. And, there's the court of Jaggers - Jonathan Keeble's truly Dickensian clerk Wemmick, walking like a choosy flamingo on eggshells, self-conscious of every word, or Jamie de Courcey's Herbert, a young Micawber-with-fists.
Supreme in this world of laws and procedures, so unlike Pip's spendthrift, emotion-driven life, Malcolm Rennie is authoritative as the great lawyer himself, with the full mythic Dickensian dimension, pulling all the strings purse-strings included yet remaining entirely detached.
Pip: Oliver Dimsdale
Magwitch: Jonathan Hackett
Compeyson: Jon Cartwright
Joe Gargery: John Elmes
Mrs Joe/Molly: Rebecca Charles
Biddy: Amelia Lowdell
Orlick/Drummle: Ian Golding
Estela: Charlotte Emmerson
Miss Havisham: Una Stubbs
Herbert Pocket: Jamie de Courcety
Jaggers: Malcolm Rennie
Wemmick: Jonathan Keeble
Startop: Jot Davuies
Convicts: Anthony Bowers, Isabel Foley
Director: Jacob Murray
Designer: Johanna Bryant
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Steve Brown
Music: Tayo Akinbode
Choreographer: Shobna Gulati
Fights: Renny Krupinski
Dialect coach: Lise Olson
2004-04-08 11:33:53