Leah Doz & Kate Trotter
My expectations for this production were great but were dashed early on. Michael Shamata has adapted and directed the coming of age novel, Great Expectations for the stage and very little about this production engaged me. I am not sure that Charles Dickens’ much beloved novel can successfully translate into a stage play. I felt like I was trapped in exposition hell while all I thirsted for were characters that I cared about.
I liked the nearly bare stage with the audience in the round with exits and entrances made on all four sides of the stage, but, a lot of the staging didn’t make sense to me such as the symbolism of the chairs. Clearly, it meant something because they were rearranged or removed throughout the production, but it went completely over my head. I was also perplexed by the incessant circular laps the actors were directed to take around the stage. Shamata was clearly going for a stylized approach but the choices weren’t bold enough so it just ended up looking clunky and cumbersome.
Nothing was more awkward than Miss Havisham’s death scene. It would have been much more effective had it been done off to the side. Instead, it was performed in full view of the audience. Being able to see her pull out the symbolic red flames from the wall and twist it around herself and then run off away from the smoke engulfing her, ripped away any sort of emotional connection I should have felt in that scene.
Jeff Lillico didn’t move me one iota as Pip. I don’t understand why he never changed his performance (vocal style, movement) even though he played multiple ages in the show. He went from a seven-year-old boy to a grown man in his mid 30’s yet he stayed exactly the same throughout and didn’t even have a costume change to differentiate the ages. This flaw became especially creepy with the casting of a very young girl in the role of Estella. Yes, eventually a older actress come in to play the adult scenes but the fact remains that what I saw was an adult male falling in love with an underage girl. He was supposed to be a young teen at that point but nothing about his performance showed this. I was however, impressed with Naomi Agard’s performance in the dual roles of Young Estelle and Young Biddy. She brought a great deal of maturity to her performance and held her own against the adult actors.
Paolo Santalucia in the role of Herbert Pocket is one of the few actors in the production that brought an emotional realism and much needed energy and presence to the stage. He was a breath of fresh air each time he appeared and perked me up until he left again. How I wished he had played Pip. The rest of the cast, seemed to either play into the melodrama or play it safe.
I have come to expect more from Soulpepper because normally I am blown away by both the production values and the acting choices they bring to the stage. The gentleman next to me fell asleep and left at intermission, so clearly I wasn’t alone in finding this production of Great Expectations dull and uninspired.
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