Writer: Charles Dickens
Adaptation: Abigail Pickard Price with Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches
Director: Abigail Pickard Price
Charles Dickens has become theatrically ubiquitous in recent years during the Christmas period. It seems that one cannot move without one version of A Christmas Carol or another popping up each year.
It is something of a relief, then, to see other elements of Dickens’s oeuvre reclaiming the stage. Guildford Shakespeare Company and Jermyn Street Theatre’s David Copperfield takes the writer’s most character-filled and autobiographically tinged novel, racing through the life of its titular character in a fresh new adaptation by director Abigail Pickard Price.
Eddy Payne is a charming, guileless Copperfield, narrating the story of his life from birth. The characters he meets on life’s journey, from aunt Betsy Trotwood and servant Peggotty to Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and Copperfield’s fellow student Steerforth, are all portrayed by just two other actors, Louise Beresford and Luke Barton.
Later scenes capitalise on the small cast for some cute comedy moments, matching similar moments in the same company’s Pride and Prejudice. For the most part, though, the humour is rooted in Dickens’s own tendency to balance comic moments with deeply personal social commentary. The cast of eccentric characters elicits laughs at times, but the story also touches on alcoholism, fraud, poor mental health, poverty, and debt.
In Act I, the adaptation presents Copperfield’s life in a straightforward manner. However, several of the novel’s strands and outlying characters are filleted away to keep the play’s running time under two and a half hours. Both Barton and Beresford are experts at shifting between multiple characters, sometimes in the same scene, complemented by sterling costume and set design from Neil Irish that help keep the story moving.
True, especially in Act I, the episodic, serialised nature of Dickens’s story means that some scenes feel like sketches that end without a punchline, racing ahead into the next. But there are plenty of moments that demonstrate the power of the small cast. In particular, the use of a large, faceless puppet – a stovepipe hat and overcoat on a pole – to play David’s cruel stepfather, Murdstone, is a far more effective portrayal than a full-cast production could hope to provide.
Puppetry is also utilised, to much more humorous effect, when the character of Mr Spenlow is portrayed as a glove puppet in the style of Mr Punch. Mostly, though, we rely on human portrayals that Beresford and Barton ensure are distinct from each other. Barton, in particular, creates some impressively present characters, from Peggotty to Mr Micawber and Betsy’s gentle, kite-flying ward, Mr Dick. For her part, Beresford can take each of the various young women to whom Copperfield is attracted, from Emily to Dora and Agnes, imbuing each with a distinctive character. Her Uriah Heep is also perfectly Dickensian, unctuous and sneerily conniving.
While the first act feels like a race from chapter to serialised chapter, Act II begins to draw all the plot lines together. It is here that the three-strong cast get to have some fun with multi-roling in the same scene, using hats and props to keep characters on stage while their actors play different roles.
The mix of comedy and commentary from Dickens’s work remains, though, and one of the novel’s big action sequences – a rescue attempt of a boat caught in a storm off the Yarmouth beach – demonstrates that this small-cast production is as capable of providing suspense and tragedy as it is the novel’s more humorous moments.
As a novel, David Copperfield demonstrates everything that makes Dickens’s works sing nearly two centuries later. It is the epitome of that balance between comedic (and sometimes cartoonish) characters and a deep sense of social injustice. As this adaptation shows, it is also a cracking story with a beating emotional heart, and that sensation transfers remarkably well to the stage in this fine adaptation.
Runs until 20 December 2025
