THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS
Tuesday, November 9, 1993

Charles Staff

Expect great things from IRT play

The Indiana Repertory Theatre's "Great Expectations" offers not only a rewarding theatrical experience but also a glimpse into one of the greatest worlds literature has to offer, the world of Charles Dickens. As I watched director Karen Smith-Hill's production of Barbara Field's adept adaptation of Dickens' 1860 novel, almost half a century fell away and I thought of myself sitting in a big rocker on warm summer evenings devouring everything Dickens wrote, from "The Pickwick Papers" to his last finished novel, "Our Mutual Friend."   The first show on the Upperstage Series, now called Family Plays, "Great Expectations" tells  the story almost exactly as remembered in only about 90 minutes.

The plot is simple enough. Brought up by his feisty sister and her husband, the blacksmith, Joe Gargery, Pip learns that he has "great expectations" financially and, as he comes to believe, romantically. The change in his life comes after an escaped convict, Magwitch, accosts him in a graveyard one night and after Miss Havisham, jilted long ago and still wearing her tattered wedding dress, invites him to her decaying mansion to play with her adopted daughter, the cold-hearted Estella. Pip's adventures in London - with Jaggers, the business-like lawyer; his clerk, Wemmick; Wemmick's elderly father, whom he calls "the Aged"; and the likeable Herbert - follow until all questions are answered and all mysteries are solved. That's part of the fun in Dickens: Everything falls in place by the end.

But plot is not what Dickens is about. Dickens is about character --colorful, larger-than-life characters. They became so real when I read him that, I slowed down as I neared the end and felt sad when I'd finished, as if I'd lost friends.  Without rushing, Smith-Hill's talented cast keeps things moving and, if some of the oversized grandeur is missing here and there, the accumulative effect is totally satisfying, even moving. Of course, complete enjoyment depends on the ability to enter into 19th-century sentiment and Dickens' compassion for the fictional folks he wrote about.   Beautifully costumed in the period by Jeanette Dejong and moving swiftly around designer Mary Griswold's multi-leveled wooden platforms and stairways, Smith Hill's players make the entrance not only easy but impossible to resist - unless you're a hopeless cynic.

Ned Snell turns in a splendidly sustained portrayal of Pip, who is never out of sight or out of sound. And he is surrounded by equally gifted actors, many of them doing double or even triple duty. The single-role players are James Solomon Benn as Magwitch, though he has a walk-on or two; Karen Eterovich as Miss Havisham; Tess Lina as Estella, brought up by her foster mother to wreak vengeance on the entire male sex; and Robert Cornelius as the narrator. Benn may not be as menacing as Finlay Currie in director David Lean's superb 1946 British film version - who could be? - but he brings great strength to Magwitch's later appearances. Eterovich may not be as vocally quirky as Martita Hunt in the same movie but, again, she, too, rises to the drama of the later scenes.

Lina is pure ice as Estella and pure pathos in the last scene. But I'd like to single out these actors for work especially well-done: Mark Goetzinger as Joe and The Aged; Milicent Wright as Mrs. Joe, Biddy and Molly; and Jim Stark, Brad Griffith and Chuck Goad as Herbert, Jaggers and Wemmick, respectively.