Playwright: adapted by Michael Stock from the novel by Charles Dickens
At: Piven Theatre at the Noyes Center for the Performing Arts, in Evanston
Phone: ( 847 ) 866-8049; $15-$25
Runs through: June 26
Great Expectations tells the stories of two orphans delivered from poverty by benefactors with widely diverse motives. Philip Pirrip, called Pip by his intimates, looks to become a blacksmith like his uncle Joe until an anonymous patron offers him the means to a gentleman's education and income. Estella, whose surname we never learn, has been adopted by an embittered spinster, abandoned on her wedding day by a faithless lover, to be raised as a heartbreaker and thus wreak revenge on fickle men everywhere. What becomes of these children suddenly endowed with the freedom to make choices?
Victorian literary conventions mandate long and meandering yarns, filled with subplots and sidebars, all designed for leisurely reading. We anticipate its condensation to the time-frame dictated by modern theatre practice to be of greater duration than the roomy two hours-and-a-few adaptation by Michael Stock for this Piven Theatre production. And if some of the richness is lost in the reduction of personnel, what remains is a clean and coherent narrative readily comprehensible to those first encountering this classic story.
Length isn't the only potential hazard, however. Dickens' characters are drawn with a bolder line than modern audiences are accustomed to finding in realistic settings. Under Jennifer Green's steady guidance, however, the performances of the mostly-young cast members—including three talented youngsters from the training center—manifest vivid and distinct personalities without ever swelling into caricature. This is especially commendable in the portrayals of the grotesque Miss Havisham and the mysterious criminal Magwitch—played, respectively, by Joyce Piven and Bernard Beck, whose professional status might cow a less courageous director—but whose archetypes earn every emotional response they invoke.
Our memories of reading Dickens in the classroom do him disservice. Far from trafficking in easy stereotypes, the citizens who populate his social agendas are complex human beings recognizable to this day. The process by which Pip and Estella are, like forged metal, 'bent and broken into better shape' makes for a riveting study in the universally-difficult road to maturity.