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Great expectations

The purpose of pain?

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Adapted by Nick Ormerod and Declan Donnellan
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
Until February 4 2006

Can Charles Dickens’s novels be adapted to the stage? This production of Great Expectations answers the question very much in the affirmative.

It is faithful to the book, and with its use of the whole cast as on-stage audience, scene-shifters and narrators, is innovative, fast moving and gripping. Dickens’s own words dominate the excellent script.

Dickens really tells the story of two children whose lives are manipulated by adult ‘benefactors’ for purposes of revenge — Pip by the convict Magwitch and Estella by the jilted Miss Haversham. The plot follows the life journey of the two young people through delusion to self-awareness and eventually through pain they change and become more human and understanding of others.

Dickens has given us a parable which shows that pain can shape a character for evil or for good. In Miss Haversham’s case (powerfully played by Sian Phillips) pain sets her on a path of bitterness and revenge which ends in literal self-destruction which brings down her house. But it does not have to be like this, and that second way is a very Christian theme. Pain can make us bitter people or it can make us better people. Living in a society which only sees the negative side of pain, this production is worth a visit, even a family visit.

John Benton