Bleak Expectations (NHB Modern Plays): (West End edition)

By Mark Evans

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781788506915

Mark Evans

Mark Evans is a comedy writer, director, and actor. He has written widely for television comedy shows including The Jack Docherty Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, Popetown, and The Late Edition. He wrote and acted in the popular BBC Radio 4 comedy series Bleak Expectations, which ran from 2007 to 2012. It was adapted into a four-episode BBC TV series, The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, premiered in 2011. His novel, Bleak Expectations, based on the radio series, was published in 2012, and a stage adaptation was premiered in 2022.

Book preview

ACT ONE

VOICE-OVER. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Criterion Theatre and also to the nineteenth century for tonight’s tale of Victorian adventure. So: ladies, please ensure your ankles are safely covered at all times; gentlemen, please place your emotions in the bottle beneath your seat; children, please stop being educated and go and work down a mine… and, everyone, please gag their messenger boys or put them on hot-air-balloon mode. Thank you. And now please give a big nineteenth-century welcome – it’s the same as a twenty-first-century one but with shorter life expectancy – to the star of this evening’s show, Sir Philip Bin!

Our guest star enters as SIR PHILIP BIN. [Note: The set is shrouded in large cloths.]

SIR PHILIP. Thank you, thank you. Yes, indeed, I am Sir Philip Bin, a legend of the Victorian age, and a man who achieved many great things. I was a best-selling novelist – and far better than that hack Charles Dickens; I was a world-changing inventor; Queen Victoria’s secret, second husband; and I still hold the world record for Number of Politicians Punched in One Day – it was all of them. Best. Day. Ever. But though my later days are well documented, my early years have, until now, been a subject I have never discussed. Drink!

A white-gloved hand appears from off and hands him a drink.

And chair!

A chair slides on behind SIR PHILIP. He sits.

Parts of my youthful life are to be found in my books: A Story of Two Towns; Graham Grambleby; A Christmas Quarrel; Massive Dorrit – all my works contain clues. But I have never told the whole tale before… and it is one that needs telling, as its harrowing events trouble me to this day. Plus,

I have an unexpected tax bill to pay. So thank you all for helping with that.

He gestures to the audience.

To that end, with the help of my daughter Lily who has agreed to lend me a hand…

The white-gloved hand comes on again and waves.

…literally just one hand, as she is rather shy… tonight I shall conjure for you the people of my past…

The cast come on, lit as if memories or ghosts.

…and the locations of my long-ago…

The cast pulls the cloths from the set.

…as I tell you the story of my extraordinary early life. So, prepare to be thrilled by my young adventures, moved by my childhood suffering and shocked by the price of an interval ice cream as we begin by travelling back through the mists of time…

The stage fills with mist and smoke. SIR PHILIP wafts at it angrily.

…the incredibly annoying mists of time!

Lily’s hand appears holding a sign saying ‘Sorry!’

To one of the most significant moments of the Victorian era: my birth. As was traditional back then, I was the product of two people: my mother Agnes and my father Thomas.

THOMAS and AGNES stand next to each other. He kisses her on the cheek.

AGNES. And now I am pregnant.

SIR PHILIP. Shortly afterwards I came into this world like all male babies of the time fully grown and properly dressed.

Young PIP emerges from beneath his mother’s skirts.

PIP. Mother. Father. Delighted to meet you.

He shakes THOMAS and AGNES’s hands.

SIR PHILIP. I was soon joined by two sisters, Pippa…

PIPPA emerges from beneath AGNES’s skirts and stands next to PIP.

PIPPA. Excellent cervix, Mother.

SIR PHILIP.…and Poppy.

POPPY now pops out and joins PIP and PIPPA.

POPPY. Hi, everyone! Hope that wasn’t too painful, Mama. Hugsies?

She hugs her mother, then all three children curtsy to the audience.

SIR PHILIP. Then in line with government regulations of the day, my parents took up a new hobby of total chastity…

AGNES and THOMAS step apart and look at each other sadly and wistfully.

…though they did still occasionally and illicitly hold hands.

They hold hands illicitly and sigh.

My family name being Bin and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing more than…

PIP has joined SIR PHILIP and they say the next line together.

SIR PHILIP and PIP.…Flip-Top Bin.

PIP returns to his family as SIR PHILIP continues.

SIR PHILIP. This was shortened to ‘Ip’ then extended slightly again to ‘Pip’. And with my name established, my father decided to head abroad and seek his fortune in the recently discovered North Indies.

The children hug THOMAS goodbye, as he holds AGNES’s hand.

THOMAS. While I am gone, you must be the man of the family, Pip.

PIP. I shall try, Papa.

AGNES. Oh, Thomas! How can I hold your hand if you are abroad? I will need an arm hundreds of miles long!

THOMAS. But when I am rich I shall return… and then we may hold hands all the time! Farewell, dear family!

FAMILY. Farewell!

As he goes, he trips and falls. He bounces back to his feet.

THOMAS. I’m fine!

And he’s gone.

AGNES. Oh, my dear, clumsy Thomas…

SIR PHILIP. Once abroad, my father joined with two business partners and quickly found his fortune. He regularly sent money home, where it was looked after by a surprising person…

AGNES sits doing accounts. PIPPA enters and sees her.

PIPPA. Mama are you doing… accounts? How bold and modern of you!

AGNES. And of your father for letting me. For it is illegal under the Maximum Misogyny Act of 1803.

PIPPA. Then it shall be our secret. Though I find both it and you inspiring!

AGNES. Thank you, dear Pippa…

There is a brief, proto-feminist mother-daughter moment.

SIR PHILIP. We lived a splendid life. Our house was large and luxurious, and its rooms and corridors were filled with laughter and happiness.

PIP, PIPPA and POPPY skip onstage and stand and laugh, then stop.

PIP. Enough of this room. Now let us laugh and be happy in a corridor!

They run off again, laughing.

SIR PHILIP. It was the best of times; it was the best of times. Especially whenever Papa visited from abroad.

PIP, PIPPA and POPPY are playing. AGNES enters, THOMAS a few steps behind.

AGNES. Children, wonderful news! Your father is home!

CHILDREN. Yay!

THOMAS. Dear children!

CHILDREN. Dear Papa!

THOMAS. How good it is to see you. Pip…

PIP. Papa…

THOMAS. Pippa…

PIPPA. Papa…

THOMAS. And Poppy…

POPPY. Papa.

THOMAS. Ah, Pip and Poppy…

PIP and POPPY. Papa…

THOMAS. Poppy and Pippa…

POPPY and PIPPA. Papa…

THOMAS. Pip and Pippa…

PIP and PIPPA.

Reviews for Bleak Expectations (NHB Modern Plays)

[jtck121166 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For those who've enjoyed this BBC R4 Dickens parody, here it is - and more - in print.

It seems to me that Dickens' success as a public reader of his own works is evidence that he wrote as much to be heard as to be read: hence the excellent screen and radio adaptations; likewise, this radio piece succeeds as an adaptation into novel form.

The parody is mordant, but affectionate: a deep love (and knowledge) of the originals shines from every page.

More important, it's very funny. I enjoyed it; I think you will, too.

[foolplustime · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am a big fan of Radio 4 comedy Bleak Expectations - this book is a novelisation of the first series and, to me at least, it felt like a pretty close match. That is not a good thing.The trouble is that the radio play has an absolutely stellar cast. The book has ... all these great lines which I'm not convinced work if you have no idea of how they are delivered. The book is decent enough. It has footnotes, which are tremendously irritating if you are reading on Kindle as I was, and it's entertaining. If you are a fan of the radio show, this is a nice accompaniment. If you've never heard of it, I'd recommend looking it up. A three star score indicates a book which did what I expected it to. Ultimately, this didn't offer enough for me to give it more than that.