Last May, Brits Off Broadway—the annual spring series at 59E59—brought us the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s three-person Pride and Prejudice: a swift-paced, sparklingly rambunctious condensation of Jane Austen’s novel marked by high style and deft theatricality.
This month, Guildford returns with a three-person David Copperfield. Same producer, same director (Abigail Pickard Price), same adaptors (Price, with Guildford co-founders Sarah Gobain and Matt Pinches), and even the same primary player, Luke Barton.
Those of us who were entranced by Pride and Prejudice might well arrive with great expectations (as it were). But Guildford’s Copperfield is dull as tarnished brass: the laughs are labored, the sparkle is incidental, and there is little indication of what puts the Dickens in Dickens.
You might think that any reasonably talented actor could stand there, conjure up the presence of Wilkins Macawber, Peggotty, or that eminently hissable Uriah Heep, and handily bring down the house. Here we get glimpses and glimmers but none of the flavorful authenticity that really ought to make dedicated fans of Copperfield lift up their eyebrows and say, “Ah, yes.”
That was the precise effect of Guildford’s delectable Pride and Prejudice; while the adaptation necessarily deleted vast stretches of the original, the essence of Austen—and the flavorful character of the characters—was always in evidence. Sure, Copperfield (the novel, written 32 years after Austen’s death) is far more action-packed and character-packed than Pride and Prejudice (published when Dickens was a bairn of 1). Even so; what made Guildford’s P&P work so well was the non-stop exuberance emanating from director Price and her cast. Copperfield, alas, is built on unsatisfactorily quick flashes of narrative and stage gimmicky (sometimes effective, sometimes obvious).
All of this assumes audience familiarity with Austen and Dickens; playgoers wandering in with little or no familiarity with the originals might sit there thinking, “Isn’t it clever the way they switch costumes and change characters so quickly?” but after a while they might just wonder why anyone even bothers to read Copperfield 175 years later.
Don’t blame Dickens.
The weakness extends to the players. Barton was so very exceptional in P&P, where he essayed not only Darcy and Collins but also—as his pièce de résistance—an icily regal Lady Catherine de Bourgh with the heft of Agnes Moorhead and Judith Anderson combined. How is it possible that this same fine comic actor, handed those agelessly brilliant speeches pulled directly from Dickens, can get nowhere with Micawber? Or Peggotty or Mrs. Steerforth? On the plus side of his ledger is a touchingly effective Mr. Dick, as well as a non-comic earnestness in his brief appearances as Peggotty’s nephew Ham. But that flatfooted Micawber, early on, stops the entire adaptation in its tracks: if that immortal “annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six” speech doesn’t land, you’re jiggered (cf. Great Expectations).
Louise Beresford gives an up-and-down performance, seemingly due to the adaptation and direction. Her Agnes, Dora and Mrs. Copperfield, as presented here, are on the bland side; she does exceedingly well with the more showy characters she is handed, most notably Aunt Betsey Trotwood (with her donkeys) and Steerforth. Eddy Payne, as the hero, has more to do—he is on hand throughout, aging from infancy through 25—but less eccentricity to work with.
And let us offer a final note to Copperfieldians: In this adaptation, Barkis is not willing. He is altogether absent.
David Copperfield opened June 3, 2026, at 59E59 and runs through June 28. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
