★★★

“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.

IN THE SHADOW OF HER MAJESTY at the Jack Studio Theatre

★★★★★

“brilliantly kinetic and breezy”

This year, we’re all round Doreen’s for an absolute cracker of a Christmas.

It’s the best of times and the worst of times but this fractious and penniless Islington family have no choice but to see it through, squeezed together in their council flat like overcooked sprouts at the bottom of a bin bag.

So who’s on the guest list?

There’s world-weary matriarch Doreen (Alice Selwyn), boozing away bad memories, proud of her girls but they drive her nuts.

And sisters Gemma (wryly mordant Nancy Brabin-Platt) and single mum Riley (Lois Tallulah, more on her later). They’re at each other’s throats, one Spurs, one Arsenal, which seems to sum up their forever frenemy feuding.

And then there’s teenager Jorja (a lovely, affecting turn by Ella Harding). She’s the odd one out. She has a different father to her sisters and a secret boyfriend who is perhaps pushing a little too hard for Jorja to grow up.

Together, they are all as sparky and temperamental as Christmas lights.

Hang on. Where are all the men? Well, they are close by. That’s because this rogues gallery of feckless losers is in Pentonville prison which is just over the wall. So near and yet so far.

The wall casts a long shadow. Sometimes it’s an obstacle, especially for little lost Jorja who misses her dad. And sometimes the wall is a last line of defence against an onslaught of deadbeat drug-dealing do-nothings. Prison reform is a theme here but not so much as to be intrusive. Besides, with these men, more prison seems like the answer, not less.

Who else is coming? There’s flush Trish, an old friend (boisterous Jennifer Joseph), spreading good cheer. And pregnant stranger Jamila (Nadia Lamin showing formidable comic chops). The sisters encounter her shouting madly over that wall at incarcerated hubby Christian to keep him updated. Because Jamila is very, very pregnant. And it’s Christmas so, er, hello? How’s that going to end, we wonder.

As the sisters build up to Christmas there are secrets to be shared, some of them very uncomfortable, but in director Isla Jackson-Ritchie’s brilliantly kinetic and breezy production, the traumas are brushed past quickly, being more effective for their handling.

Enough of this doom and gloom, declares sozzled Doreen, let’s have a lovely Christmas.

The Jack Studio’s compact stage is packed and lively – three rooms in one, including a working kitchen, fridge, Christmas tree – and people are always coming and going. The whole thing is thrillingly unstagey and natural, the connections between the women – perpetually frayed, never broken – are a breath of fresh air.

The script feels less written than lived in. Lois Tallulah who plays struggling Riley with a hard face and a soft heart is the writer (and also co-director). Wow, what a talent.

Despite the friction, the endless man problems, the heartache and the cheap plonk, we could have stayed at Doreen’s a lot longer – perilous though it is – if only to find out how it all works out for the sisters. They feel like family now.

With this production, you buy a ticket, but you get an invitation: spend the festive season with the girls. They’re a raucous bunch – brutal, brittle, drunk and teetering. But you’re gonna love ’em.

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

IN THE SHADOW OF HER MAJESTY at the Jack Studio Theatre

★★★★★

“brilliantly kinetic and breezy”