At this point, Charles Dickens is basically a second Father Christmas. Every year, theatres across the country are engulfed in a blizzard of productions of A Christmas Carol. Jermyn Street Theatre have gone a little left field with their festive programming, then – but really, only a little.
Scrooge has been ditched for an adaptation of Dickens’s ‘favourite child’, David Copperfield. And, in Abigail Pickard Price’s production, the reasons for this great honour shine loud and clear. With a small cast of three – Eddy Payne as David, and Luke Barton and Louise Beresford as, erm, everyone else – the diverse and sprawling world is pulled out bit by bit. Does it manage to include all the intricate chronicles and glory of the book’s 882 pages? Well, of course not. But good god, Pickard Price keeps Dickens’s irresistible richness intact.
Much of that is down to Barton and Beresford, who must be dying for a lie-down after their final bow. The pair dash from one personality to the next, changing costumes, physicality, and accents at the rate of a runaway train. The speed alone is enough to impress you, but with every new face so sharply etched, it becomes a magnificent, character-exploding evening.
As our narrator, David (also nicknamed Davy, Trotwood, Daisy, and Doady at various points), Payne exudes wide-eyed, open-hearted charisma. Occasionally, he slips away from telling the story to provide reflections from his future life; early on, he ponders the novel's iconic central question: whether he is ‘the hero of my own story’. A menagerie of people surrounds him: his dedicated nursemaid, Peggotty (a bonnet-wearing Barton), his sharp-tongued, donkey-beating aunt Betsy Trotwood (Beresford is formidable) and her eccentric lodger, Mr Dick (Barton), and the ever-babbling, dramatic Mr Micawber (Barton), who bounces from being a cheery old fellow to threatening to cut his own throat. David journeys through his school days, London streets, Cambridge, Yarmouth, and Kent – meeting them and many more along the way.
Pickard Price’s adaptation moves through the changing locations with hurricane force. It is quite remarkable to fit so much of David’s life into the two hour 20-minute running time, but there are some inevitable trade-offs. Deaths come and go; we don’t get a chance to sit in the early flickers of romance between David and Agnes, the girl who truly holds his heart. While the scuttling Uriah Heep (Beresford) shows the potential for menace on first encounter, his villainy doesn’t quite sting in the big confrontation scene.
But, these are little complaints of an adaptation ruled by complete and utter theatrical ingenuity. The wicked Mr Murdstone has no face; instead, he is puppeteered as a towering hat and jacket, and is all the more sinister for it. Stick puppets are resourcefully used when Barton or Beresford is already busy playing another character. There’s even a Punch and Judy show thrown in for good measure. Despite the many spinning creative ideas, nothing feels out of place, and it remains a story of quiet personal reflection and growth. Who needs A Christmas Carol to get you into the Christmas spirit eh?
