I confess I often approach Christmas theatre in London with a touch of dread, as a reviewer who is mostly allergic to panto and all of its traditions, while still feeling a touch of tinsel guilt. But occasionally there are other shows that appear around this time, full of feel-good energy and hard-earned happy endings, that seem to catch the spirit of the season precisely. This is one.
David Copperfield is familiar theatre fare, but never have I experienced a production such as this. Only three actors, and with one of them, Eddy Payne, playing solely the title role, that meant that all the other parts were all depicted by Louise Beresford and Luke Barton. This was an incredible technical feat by all concerned – primarily the actors who carefully distinguished between the plethora of characters in the subtlest gradations of accent, body-language and mannerism.
But it also was an exceptional team effort by the costume makers – to ensure that plausibility of outfit matched ease of donning and shedding, and by Neil Irish, the set designer, who worked miracles out of a simple windowed back-drop, two doors and a scattering of furniture, signs and boxes. Everything was honed to the last inch as the mass of marker-tape corners on the stage indicated. Movement director, Amy Lawrence, must have been a key player in that regard, and detailed sound and light designs added extra conviction.
Miraculously, it all seemed to flash past without a hitch, whether we were in London or Yarmouth, or Canterbury, as we floated as freely on the gyres of Dickens’ imagination as one of Mr Dick’s thought-relieving kites.
With so many memorable scenes to conjure with, it is hard to isolate just a few highlights. However, every time Luke Barton assumed the mantle of Mr Micawber the energy was astonishing, whether comic in his over-cheery circumlocutions, or dismaying in the forcefulness of his final manic rant. Likewise, Eddy Payne was wholly convincing in David’s journey from boy to man, finding pathos or punchy push-back as needed and, best of all, a sense of gradually gathering wisdom as one hard-knock after another provided lessons in self-knowledge. Lucy Beresford found more depth in Agnes and Dora than many portrayals, but also gave wholly convincing accounts of the two male villains, Steerforth and Heep, while offering a rounded portrait of Aunt Betsy that stayed just the right side of caricature.
None of this would be possible without the savvy adaptation and direction of Abigail Pickard Price, whose judgement of what to accentuate and what to abbreviate was impeccable. In a text of such generous profusion, it is very hard to decide what to omit, but her skill in choosing what works dramatically and pictorially was unerring, and the most challenging of scenes, whether an epic shipwreck or the liberation of flying a kite outdoors, or the squalor of a London warehouse were all impeccably evoked.
One of the great features of Jermyn Street Theatre is that the constraints it imposes are often a stimulus, not a hindrance, to creativity. So often limitations of space spur the actors and creatives on to greater invention and this production is a triumphant example of that in practice. Out of such confinement leap a cornucopia of characters that do full justice to the teeming imagination of the author, and leave us with just a little more hope for humanity in hard times.
By Charles Dickens (adapted and directed by Abigail Pickard Price)
Cast: Luke Barton, Louise Beresford, Eddy Payne
2 hrs 20 mins, with interval
Until 20 December 2025
Photo Credit Steve Gregson