Bleak Expectations at the Criterion Theatre is a good example of an attempt to create a commercial success by numbers.  Take a successful radio show with its own following.  Include the name of a famous writer.  Then line up eighteen famous faces off the telly and get them to come in for a few nights each to read the links.  And watch the money roll in.

I’ve nothing against a hard-nosed commercial attitude to theatre, so long as we have the other kind too. But the show can’t rely entirely on the formula.  There has to be originality and wit too.

I had a sinking feeling about Bleak Expectations when I read the programme note by writer Mark Evans.  “First, thanks for coming. Second, thanks for buying a programme.  And third, if you’re reading this, thanks for reading this, in which I’m going to try to explain why I wrote the play you’re here to see tonight….”  Or to put it another way: “37 words down, only 263 to go and then I can do something interesting.”Mark Evans also wrote the radio show, which extracts a fair amount of humour from mixing modern and Dickensian language.  It has not translated entirely successfully to the stage, though director Caroline Leslie has added a few quite funny visual gags.  A lot of the humour relies on making fun of Victorian prudery, which is also quite fun, the first few times.  

The show is blessed with the sort of actors who will extract a laugh from a line if it’s humanly possible.   “Even in love your manly pacing is excellent, dear brother” says Pippa Bin (Serena Manteghi) as her brother Pip Bin (Dom Hodson) paces across the stage, and the two actors make it a funny moment.

John Hopkins makes a splendid villain as Gently Benevolent, with a laugh as evil as anything you’ll hear come pantomime season, and his fellow villain, Whackwell Hardthrasher (Marc Pickering), slithers evilly and satisfyingly.  Mark Pickering also plays Hardthrasher’s brother and sister.