Bleak Expectations comes with high expectations as it follows on from a very successful Radio 4 series. So successful that the team were able to attract top names to guest as the narrator through this West End run. This week it is the excellent Sally Phillips, writes Michael Holland.
Sir Philip Bin introduces himself and goes on to tell his life story, right from the moment of his conception when his parents kissed.
The young Philip became known as Pip, and he had two sisters, Pippa and Poppy. Their father bought them a pipe and a puppy, which created a lot of tongue-twisting dialogue. Oh yes, he also bought one an anvil, which became a rather heavy but crucial prop.
This is the 19th century when women had to have their ankles covered and be married with children before they reached 28 or prepare for a life of spinsterhood, plus other ridiculous Victorian conventions of the day. Or, that is the view according to Mark Evans the author, whose ideas of that era came from reading a couple of Dickens books and seeing the ‘pomposity of TV costume drama’.
Framed in the familiar tropes of Dickens, Bleak Expectations takes us through Pip Bin’s extraordinary life. We find ourselves in church, in court, in graveyards, in mansions and in hovels in this topsy-turvy tale
When Pip’s father dies, Gently Benevolent (an evil dastard) becomes the family’s guardian and immediately plans to marry one of the young daughters, get the widow sectioned and send Pip off to boarding school where Wackwell Hardthrasher, the Head, will ensure Pip dies on his 18th birthday so that the cunning Benevolent inherits the family fortune instead.
At St Bastards School, ‘What? And Sewage Soup’ is on the menu, which leads to the boys trying to eat themselves or each other before they die in a ‘freak accident’ when they come of age.
Evans has written the perfect melodrama farce with fiendish plots and devilish plans, and characters to match: Rev. Praygood Hardthrasher; Bakewell Havertwitch, Flora Dies-Early, plus sundry others of a hilarious nature.
There is a story of sorts with men seeking young wives, women seeking rich husbands, fortunes robbed and regained; sisters lost and found, but it is difficult trying to keep up with such a madcap tale when there is so much hilarity to contend with. Oh, how we laughed when the stage was littered with dead bodies. Philip Bin finally lives up to his name and Havertwitch comes back to return the favour Pip afforded him as a boy, drawing us to a conclusion where ‘Evil, cruelty and malice have been vanquished’.
The courting ritual of the time is ripped apart and a wedding is described as ‘a funeral for Flora’s innocence’. As well as the jokes (that often had the actors corpsing) there are visual gags aplenty, but it is the characters and the actors that bring them alive that reign supreme here. Marc Pickering and John Hopkins stood out for me, but each of those on the stage put in great performances under the superb direction of Caroline Leslie.
In Bleak Expectations you will recognise bits of Hard Times, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers and more, all gently mocked but without taking away their importance to English literature.
Mark Evans has written a wonderfully comic play; I can’t remember a theatre so full of laughter.
Criterion Theatre, 218-223 Piccadilly, St. James’s, London W1J 9HR until September 3rd.
Times: 7.30pm; matinees 2.30pm. Admission: £17.59 – £93.19.
Booking: 033 33 202 895 – https://www.criterion-theatre.co.uk
