David Copperfield, Evening Star

It's great fun.   It's lively, packed with terrific people, funny, sad, sentimental, noble, and a terrific yarn.

If you thought Dickens wrote huge, heavy, gloomy books, think again. This version shakes out the very best of the story and tracks David through life from tragic lad to handsome man.   Along the way his adventures are illuminated by a vivid crowd of people.

Director Ivan Cutting has assembled a cracking cast of eight actors.   Between them they play a score of people. Mark Feakins plays the adult David like a flame in a dark world while Toby Davies produces an astonishing contrast as both glowing Steerforth and slimy Uriah Heep.

The play is an entertaining, energetic, whole-hearted, lovely bit of story-telling.

Carol Carver