Peter Crawley reviews Great Expectationsat the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

Great Expectations

Gate Theatre, Dublin

Great Expectations- how is any adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic novel supposed to live up to a title like that? The problem with transposing the rambling narrative, Victorian period detail and amusing grotesqueries of Dickens to the stage is not so much what is lost from it, but rather whether anything can be gained by it. This revival of Hugh Leonard's 1995 adaptation for the Gate, too unfocused in style and too bare in staging to fulfil much anticipation, suggests that Dickens is best enjoyed in his most natural form: the BBC mini-series.

That is meant only partly facetiously; an author who rationed out his tale in serial form and prioritised character over set pieces, Dickens now lends himself rather readily to episodic small-screen intimacy. In the transformation of the orphan Pip from adorable rural urchin (Jack Gleeson, who alternates the role with Devin O'Shea-Farren) to shallow London gentleman of mysterious means (Adam Fergus), Leonard's version moves briskly through events, using Pip the Elder and Pip the Younger as occasional onstage narrators.

It's a clever device - when Fergus's dapper adult has turned his back on his humble origins, his younger self stalks him from the shadows - but Alan Stanford's staging never responds with spectacle to match that inventiveness. For instance, a bewildering amount of action is limited to the peripheries of Bruno Schwengl's set, a muslin cyclorama framed with an angry red border. The circumstances of Pip's family may be meagre, but surely Kelly Campbell's screeching Mrs Joe and Murray McArthur's endearing Joe Gargery can afford more than a table downstage right.

Given that Pip's journey will take him from a misty Kent graveyard to the airless mansion of vengeful shrew Miss Havisham (a sadly wasted Donna Dent) and the bustle of London, a certain amount of economy is necessary. But with so much of the stage left so bare for so long, the production is, quite literally, a waste of space.

What's needed, then, are performances to fill it. As the young Pip, Jack Gleeson is so assured it's rather a shame that Adam Fergus eventually steps in to relieve him; and there is a lot of fun to be had in Domhnall Gleeson's well-judged Herbert Pocket, who simpers charmingly through the show's best lines. Meanwhile, everyone who has recognised that Dickens's caricatures should be attacked with relish - Robert O'Mahony, Mal Whyte, Niamh Shaw and, in particular, Mark O'Regan - enlivens the otherwise staid proceedings.

In those vignettes there is a glimmer of what this production could have been, and when both our Pips consult the original novel to see how their story pans out, there is certainly some ironic intention in Leonard's self-reflexiveness. It might have been more acutely honoured if Stanford had chosen to exaggerate rather than merely illustrate the tale.

You may come out of the show feeling you know the classic as if you've read the Cliffs Notes themselves, but otherwise it is advisable to manage your expectations.

Until Feb 2

Peter Crawley