Charles Dickens has seen all sorts of revivals recently (he would have been 200 last year). His home at 48 Doughty St was revamped and re-opened in 2012 and Mike Newell’s film of Great Expectations starring Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes was released at the end of the year. And earlier this week, a theatrical adaptation of that same story by Jo Clifford – which was first staged in Scotland in the 1980s and has toured all over the world since - opened in the West End.

While Dickens might have been the literary voice of social realism in Victorian times, this interpretation takes a more fantastical approach to the well-loved story of Pip, who rises from a childhood of poverty and abuse to become a young man of means and property, albeit from an unknown benefactor. We all suspect Miss Havisham, the wealthy spinster who sits pining in her wedding dress for the suitor who jilted her. But she has her own dodgy agenda, weaving a web to entrap his heart for her beautiful step-daughter as her bitter revenge on all men.

The story is well known – even if you’ve only seen the trailer for the recent film you’ll have picked up this much. But while the film plays it as straight Victoriana, this production has gone for high melodrama in a dark and Gothic setting – feeling both 1800s and 1980s at the same time. With a permanent backdrop of Miss Havisham’s decaying mansion, it’s difficult to mark the transition in Pip’s life from pauper to gentleman; we, like him, are constantly drawn back to the darkness of her scheming ways, the rotting rags and tatters of her wedding dress and manipulations of a mind bent on revenge. But maybe that is the point.

Though the original stage production predates Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland by over 20 years, there are shades of this fantastical world here – not to mention the fact that young Pip looks very like a young Johnny Depp! There are echoes too of the make-believe magic of Willy Wonka and Angela Carter; and slapstick and farce from music hall days.

There are strong performances from Josh Elwell as Joe, Jack Ellis as Jaggers and Suzanne Robertson as Biddy. The older Pip – Paul Nivison - has an unenviable task, spending most of the time on stage alongside his younger self played by Taylor Jay-Davis, but with not much to say or do. The thing is – there is so much within Great Expectations to contain in one evening. I enjoyed it as a stage adaptation. But it’s a mighty task to encompass the richness and complexity of one of Dickens’ best-loved works in a few scant hours.

Great Expectations is at The Vaudeville Theatre on the Strand, London; booking now until June. For discounts and theatre break offers for Great Expectations, visit the All About You shop

Image courtesy of Alastair Muir