★★★

“The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way”

We know Miss Havisham as the heartless manipulator of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. She is indelibly printed on our minds – dressed in cobwebs and a faded wedding gown, time frozen on the day she was jilted.

But how did she arrive at such an horrendous fate?

In her earnest solo production, writer and performer Heather Alexander aims to put paper-thin flesh on brittle bones, creating an origin story for the striking monster. She takes Miss Havisham from the misery of her childhood to the edge of love and fulfilment. The story that emerges is one of bitterness that accumulates over time like a hardening residue.

Under Dominique Gerrard’s formal direction, the busy set foretells of an eerie fate. It is dressed with bridal gowns and white veils, a clock ticking obtrusively but forever fixed at 20 minutes to nine.

Centre stage, there is a bed – or is it a coffin? Ghostly Miss Havisham rises from her slumber to tell a tale of a motherless girl, confused, unloved and fearful of God, death and her brutish father.

There is something of Norma “Sunset Boulevard” Desmond in Alexander’s feline physicality and phrasing: wide eyes, angular posing and an epic grandeur forever tumbling towards tantrum.

Her tragic isolation is underscored by her differences: rich amid the poor, girl among boys, a child with everything but nothing that matters. In a pivotal school room blunder she confuses Medusa for an angel and becomes in her own mind, a bad girl, a cursed girl, destined only to wound and harden hearts.

After a poor start in life, matters get worse, and the first act is a testing run of merciless catastrophes. The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way. (Is “jumping into the box of life” really an image of freedom and exploration?)

After the rigours of the first act – where the tone is relentlessly morbid – Miss Havisham finally blossoms. She emerges in London a young woman capable of catching the eye of James, a dashing actor who appears loving and attentive if, er, unreliable.

Dotted about the story are reminders of the culmination – Satis House, a tragic girl named Stella, the ominous marshes hiding secrets in their billowing fog. We wonder if this Miss Havisham will grow sufficiently to match Dickens’ capacious version. We sit like engineers planning a trans-continental railway hoping the tracks from east and west will meet precisely.

The answer is: not quite, but only out by an inch or two.

Dickens’ Havisham is necessarily a gothic horror, a fully-formed, self-starting force of vengeance and malevolence. Alexander’s is a more modern interpretation: a woman as a reaction to her environment and trauma, a pitiful victim of men and their predations.

In an accomplished display, Heather Alexander fully embodies this icon of literature. It is a well-organised portrayal; perhaps not the baroque portrait it aspires to be but, instead, a chilling mosaic compiled from fragments and shards.

THE HABITS

Hampstead Theatre

★★★★★

“high and low stakes all come together into a funny – and moving – confection, thanks to a five-strong cast”

In The Habits, a blizzard of spells is cast across the small theatre space, the most potent of which captivates an audience left utterly enchanted by a drama about the stories we tell ourselves to get by.

The setting is Warboar Board Games café in Bromley.

Three friends have gathered, as they have done every Thursday for months. This is another session of Dungeons and Dragons, the tabletop role-playing game where players create characters and embark on collaborative adventures, guided by a Dungeon Master who narrates the story, sets challenges, and determines outcomes based on dice rolls.

Teenage student Jess is the Dungeon Master drawing her story from a heavily-inked book of frantic notes and sketches. She is transfixed, perhaps to an unhealthy degree, by the dark imagery of her quest. With her is Maryn, an overworked trainee solicitor and part-time wizard; and Milo, a reluctant job seeker and warrior princess.

They are on a mission to defeat the Nightmare King. Who is, of course, both real and not real.

Because while the players fight orcs by day, they battle demons by night. This is especially true of 16-year-old Jess who is dealing with the death of her brother and sinking herself into the game he loved in order to find a way through her grief.

She finds truth in fantasy.

Meanwhile, the venue itself is in crisis. Caffe Nero is hovering with offers. Owner Dennis is 55 and wondering if a life of games and light lute plucking is one of significance. He’s thinking of selling up, threatening to deny Jess the denouement she needs. Besides, he has a new girlfriend, Bev, a hard-nosed copper who doesn’t get “dragons and things” and, if pushed prefers, urgh, Monopoly.

“No games,” she demands of their relationship and their pastimes.

Pope John Paul II once said, “Of all the unimportant things, football is the most important.” The same is true of D&D. Jack Bradfield’s labour-of-love play captures the benign and jolly idiocy of this mismatch with a pitch perfect ear, drawing on his own experiences as a D&D fan. The script leans into the comedy: the wry and twinkly banter, the bickering and sense of family. Players relish the fact they have found their tribe and quibble on matters that, to outsiders, might seem arcane.

These high and low stakes all come together into a funny – and moving – confection, thanks to a five-strong cast.

Ruby Stokes as Jess is mesmeric – diffident and truculent and racked by unvoiced pain. Paul Thornley as Dennis brings an engaging hangdog warmth to the conflicted man-boy café owner, recognising, but not relinquishing, his own little fantasy. Debra Baker works wonders with Bev. The role is little more than a cameo, but she creates a pin-sharp portrait with just a look and a line. The fractious relationship between Milo (Jamie Bisping) and Maryn (Sara Hazemi) is underwritten but the actors pile into their characters with gusto, as D&D demands.

Ed Madden’s direction conjures the epic scale of their quests using the merest of ingredients, escalating the stakes with epic music and costume. With only a simple set – table, chairs – he takes us on a journey to a dark castle, and into broken hearts.

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way”

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed on 13th March 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Peter Mould

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HAVISHAM

HAVISHAM

HAVISHAM

THE HABITS

Hampstead Theatre

★★★★★

“high and low stakes all come together into a funny – and moving – confection, thanks to a five-strong cast”

THE HABITS

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 10th March 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Genevieve Girling

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE HABITS

THE HABITS

THE HABITS