A creaky old curiosity shop: PATRICK MARMION reviews Bleak Expectations 

Gloomy Expectations (Criterion Theatre, London)

Verdict: Not the Dickens

Judgement:

We live in a world where stage and screen travesties of great books lurk around every corner.

To be fair to Bleak Expectations – a stage spin-off of Mark Evans’ Radio 4 comedy series – it’s not just a travesty of Dickens’ complete works, but of the entire 19th century.

Photofit Dickensian hero Pip, the eldest son of the ‘Bin’ family, has been through hard times and must embark on a character-building odyssey through Victorian society, from schools, courts, prisons and churches, before making his fortune by making inventions. a trash can (geddit?).

(L to R) Emily Waters, Marc Pickering, Serena Manteghi, JJ Henry, Sally Phillips, Dom Hodson, Rachel Summers, Shane David-Joseph, Ashh Blackwood and John Hopkins attend the press night screening for ‘Bleak Expectations’ at The Criterion Theater on May 18 in London

Like The Play What I Wrote, in remembrance, this has a new celebrity guest every week. It’s currently Sally Phillips (Bridget Jones’ Shazza), right, who’s made to look and sound like a ventriloquist’s dummy thanks to a lip-stiffening pouch.

Sue Perkins will inherit the prosthesis next month and Stephen Fry in August. . . when they get there. Aside from a blizzard of sometimes very good jokes, this is little more than a very, very childish student revue.

In the absence of a worthwhile satirical target, much hinges on director Caroline Leslie’s commendably choreographed antics.

Dom Hodson is a posh but dim-witted Pip, Rachel Summers a sexually repressed love interest named Ripely Fecund, while Ashh Blackwood and Serena Manteghi have fun as two sisters.

In the spirit of lowbrow spoofery, the Cod Victorian sets are wonky and wobbly, with the panels of a door falling out and requiring a stage hand to pull it back in.

Fans of the radio show will applaud, but are there enough to make this cracking stage version more than an old curio shop?