Nae Expectations – Tron Theatre

As the title suggests, this is a version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, relocated North of the English border. Young Pip (Gavin Jon Wright) is now a young Scottish lad encountering Scottish versions of Magwitch (Gerry Mulgrew), Miss Havisham (Karen Dunbar) and, unexpectedly, judgemental cows, on a journey from the Scottish countryside to Glasgow. It’s a journey of great, and sometimes nae, expectations as he meets and helps an escaped convict and a twisted lady & young girl in a decrepit house, three people who will have far-reaching, and often sinister, consequences in his ongoing journey for personal betterment.

Director Andy Arnold, for whom this is the 40th and final directing turn at the Tron called this story “a wonderful mix of dry and caustic wit combined with tragic events,” a description that not all versions could take, despite Dickens calling the plot himself a “grotesque tragi-comic conception”. However, it’s something this adaptation definitely leans into, as you can probably tell from the mention of judgemental cows, and the play makes good use of its set for both comedic and dramatic purposes, with Miss Havisham’s House in particular hitting the right note of ruined grandiosity.

The show places a great deal on Pip’s shoulders, not only as the lead but with multiple ages from childhood to the age of 30, not to mention changes in status and accent. However, Wright, with some nifty blocking, are more than up for the task. The cast also gets their moment to shine, often in multiple roles such as Jamie Marie Leary in the roles of Mrs Joe, Estella, a secretary and several passers-by. Karen Dunbar is excellent as a slightly crasser Miss Havisham; Simon Donaldson gets to be both the emotional core of the show as Joe Gargery and a comic relief as the effete Kevin Pocket; and Grant Smeaton ably threads the needle of making intentionally boring characters humorous as Mr Pumblechook and Jaggers.

As with any adaptation, changes and compression are inevitable, though big changes are few, except arguably with the character of Estella. One of the biggest changes is in the ending, though maybe this is less a change than a meta tradition, such as what Greta Gerwig did with her adaptation of Little Women (you know, the film in which Ryan Gosling doesn’t sing “I am Meg and I’m enough”).

Dickens famously struggled with the end of Great Expectations. The final chapter he initially wrote, and favoured for not ascribing to traditional tropes, saw an unmarried Pip in London, where he briefly sees Estella, now married for the second time. Following comments by another writer that this was too sad, Dickens rewrote it prior to publication so that Pip meets a widowed Estella in the ruins of Satis House, and they leave together, though he would still try to leave the reader on an ambiguous note, even altering the last line in a later edition to keep their coming together definitely ambiguous. Literary critics remain split as to which ending (both of which have since been published) is better to this day.

The play is less successful however in some of its more faithful aspects, unfortunately. One of the story’s most famous sequences involves a dramatic death (vague spoilers), a staging challenge at the best of times which this show further disservices by heavily foreshadowing and lamp shading to such a degree that even a complete newcomer would get ahead of events.

Writer Gary McNair is well versed with the perils and reputation that come with adapting a classic, having both previously adapted Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist (also directed by Arnold) for the Tron, and having struggled with reading classics for fun in his youth. The result is a faithful but distinctive adaptation which had its audience in stitches while ably hitting the dramatic beats, as well as most of the classic moments from the book, in a good example of both Dickens and Scottish theatre.

Nae Expectations is running at the Glasgow Tron Theatre until the 4th November. Tickets can be found at: https://www.tron.co.uk/shows/nae-expectations/

Reviewer: Oliver Giggins

Reviewed: 24th October 2023

North West End UK Rating: