Theatre review: Great Expectations

A week ago I saw the spoof Bleak Expectations, this week it's the turn of the actual Charles Dickens (Chickens to his friends,) although there's times when this too feels like it's edging into parody, as a 19th century writer often lauded for his comedy gets it staged by one of the most beloved stand-ups of the 20th and 21st. If it wasn't for the ubiquity of A Christmas Carol, the melodrama Great Expectations would no doubt get the top spot as Chickens' most-adapted book - its most recent TV version was mainly talked about in terms of why there was any need for Olivia Colman to put on Miss Havisham's wedding dress when it was still lightly toasted from Gillian Anderson's turn. At least Selina Cadell's production has an unusual USP: Mark Izzard has adapted the story as a monologue for Eddie Izzard.

Izzard narrates the story as Pip, the apprentice blacksmith who dreams of becoming a gentleman and marrying Estella, the objectively awful adopted daughter of the as-batshit-insane-as-she-is-obscenely-wealthy Miss Havisham.

When a secret benefactor sets Pip up with exactly the kind of income and education that would raise him to the status he dreams of, he assumes this mysterious friend is Miss Havisham. But it isn't. Izzard has of course had a hugely successful career as a comedian, and has also acted, and this show is a rather strange combination of the two: The one-woman show structure means it's heavy on the narration, so we can actually get a lot of the wry comic observations and descriptions that gave Chickens his reputation as a comic genius, and which have to largely fall by the wayside in other dramatic adaptations.

But Izzard also feels like she's riffing her way through a lot of the performance. This is definitely a form of storytelling stand-up whose movement style and conversations between different characters hark back to some of Izzard's most famous routines. The androgynous look with frock-coat and heeled boots, in front of Tom Piper's creepily dilapidated set aren't a million miles from the dramatic visuals of something like Glorious, and I honestly wouldn't have been entirely surprised if James Mason and Mrs Badcrumble had made an appearance. With Izzard's brother on adaptation duties it's hard to entirely shake accusations of this being a vanity project, and the emphasis on surreal comedy means the more serious scenes in the second act drag a bit. But if it is something of a curate's egg, at least it's an entertainingly weird one.

Great Expectations by Mark Izzard, based on the novel by Charles Dickens, is booking until the 1st of July at the Garrick Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.