Bleak Expectations (NHB Modern Plays)

The story Charles Dickens might have written after drinking too much gin…

Follow half-orphan Pip's extraordinary exploits with sisters Pippa and Poppy and best friend Harry Biscuit, as they attempt to escape the calculating clutches of the dastardly Mr Gently Benevolent, defeat the hideous Hardthrasher siblings, and deflect disaster at every turn! Will evil be vanquished by virtue? Can love triumph over hate?

Mark Evans' stage play Bleak Expectations is a hilarious, chaotic caper, featuring dastardly villains, preposterous names, pulse-quickening romances, heart-rending death scenes, and definitely, probably, hopefully a happy ending.

Based on the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, the play opened at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in 2022, directed by Caroline Leslie. It transferred to the Criterion Theatre in London's West End in 2023, where it featured a medley of many well-known actors and comedians.

It offers rich opportunities to amateur theatre companies looking for a gloriously daft Dickensian romp which will have their audiences joyfully transported and begging for more.

'Dickens with a dash of Monty Python… nimbly combines period detail with a sense of the absurd… immaculately polished puns and in-jokes' – The Times

'A fast-paced comedy mashup that sends up Britishness with oodles of silliness… zings with intelligence, imagination and comic anarchy' – Guardian

'Cheek-achingly funny… a ceaseless stream of quick one-liners that delivers laugh after laugh of pure entertainment… a great night out' – Broadway World