Great Expectations

Bristol Old Vic

If you're going to turn a 600 page novel into a digestible two hour play, something's got to go. In David Farr's adaptation of Great Expectations, a lot has gone. He has honed the work into a simple, quick-paced narrative which replaces Dickensian verbosity with psychodrama. A sprawl of characters are dumped - including the charming Herbert, leaving Pip as a truly lonesome figure throughout the story - and others such as Compeyson are reduced to mere ciphers. Farr narrows it all down to one focus: the subjectivity of the central character, presenting twisted people and twisted fates through the distorting lens of Pip's personality. This strips Dickens of his familiar tone, and recasts him in the style of a mid-20^th century European writer.

This 'continental' feel is reflected in director Gordon Anderson's staging. Whilst Farr has managed to make Dickens feel more like Dürrenmatt, Anderson offers a highly stylised conception which has its roots firmly outside the English theatrical tradition. When inspiration strikes, Anderson's vision is exceptional. One of the most striking images is a Christmas dinner table rearing almost vertically from the stage, the adults in preposterously outsized hats towering over the young Pip (Aidan McArdle) at the bottom. It is Tenniel's Mad Hatter's Tea Party remixed by Kafka to haunt the mind of a terrified child. Miss Haversham - a spellbinding performance by Jenny Quayle - scuttles around her bewebbed mansion like a great white spider, spinning plots and pulling the threads of her puppets. Unfortunately, Anderson and designer Dick Bird seem to have found too few imagination-sparking moments in Farr's script. As a result, a great deal of the play takes place on aching expanses of bare stage with little more than lighting effects and smoke to set the scene.

Nonetheless, the theatrical ambition of this production is a million miles from the staid provinciality of the unadventurous Liaisons Dangereuses which launched the new artistic directors' first season. Having set their sights on emulating the regional state theatres found on the Continent, the Old Vic's new regime can take satisfaction from the fact that this production is more Mittel-Europa than Middle England. If Liaisons was the blip and Great Expectations is the future, then - for the first time in years - a night at the theatre in Bristol is suddenly going to become an exciting prospect.

Toby O'Connor Morse