Theatre review: Bleak Expectations

We've had films and TV get stage adaptations, now radio gets in on the act; it ended on Radio 4 eleven years ago, but like its characters Mark Evans' Bleak Expectations has risen from the dead in a new and disturbing form. Evans has written a stage version that adapts mainly the first of the five series of frantic Dickensian parody about Pip Bin (Dom Hodson) and his sisters Pippa (Serena Manteghi) and Poppy (Rachel Summers.) Their rich, happy Victorian childhoods go wrong when their father dies in a freak penguin-related accident, and their mother (Ashh Blackwood) does the only respectable thing for a widowed woman of her time, and immediately goes mad. The siblings' nemesis is their new guardian, Gently Benevolent (John Hopkins,) who makes no secret of the fact that he's constantly plotting to murder Pip and marry one of his sisters for the inheritance.

So we get a convoluted plot involving disguises, exploding cakes, exploited children, forced marriages, a kindly escaped convict (Shane David-Joseph) and, of course, swans, all in the service of covering as many Dickensian tropes as possible, in as silly a way imaginable. As is probably apparent I'm a fan of the original, and hoped this would do it justice.

And for the most part it does, although the first act might be a little bit hamstrung by having to introduce the premise and all the characters that are going to be put in peril. It's also a pretty faithful adaptation of the radio scripts, so I was familiar not just with what was about to happen but also the exact gags we were going to get along the way. But it does include the classic setpiece of Pip being sent to St Bastard's School for Boys, meeting his future best friend Harry Biscuit (J.J. Henry) and escaping via the salt mines. Caroline Leslie's production has found a visual style to match the story, with Katie Lias' colourful set giving plenty of opportunities for ghosts, long-lost relatives and disembodied hands to pop up.

An added gimmick for this West End run is that the story's narrator, Pip's older self, is played by a different special guest star every week. Currently Sue Perkins is donning Sir Philip Bin's fake moustache, throwing little digs in at everything from stage management to the rail strikes, and generally seeming to have a great time. She fits in well with a generally funny cast, but there's no question the show is well and truly stolen by Marc Pickering as the evil and generally doomed Hardthrasher family. Originally a nod to Kind Hearts and Coronets, here the multiple characters become an opportunity for Pickering to shamelessly ham things up, expanding his four roles until he's eventually playing an entire jury at once.

The very silly style of comedy that also gets a few literary in-jokes in quickly warms the crowd up, although I thought the show most came to life in its second act. I remain too scarred by Hairspray's fake corpsing and One Man, Two Guvnors' fake ad-libbing to not always be a bit suspicious of performances that seem to have got a little bit out of hand but, real or not, the increasing sense that the regular cast and guest star are just trying to make each other laugh definitely tipped this over into a really joyous evening. Some references to the series' running jokes (Pip and Gently's homoerotic rivalry; Gently's terrible disguises that invariably fool Pip completely) feel a bit rushed, but given the general chaos I don't suppose that's too out of place. I wasn't sure at first if it would live up to my expectations, but by the end I would agree that it was far from bleak.

Bleak Expectations by Mark Evans is booking until the 3rd of September at the Criterion Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.