Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, an update of David Copperfield set in the Appalachians, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last week (sharing the honor with Trust by Hernan Diaz). I'm currently reading the novel and hope to have a review for you soon ..read more

This post will contain major spoilers, so I'll put the review under the cut. By the time Miss Havisham has blown Compeyson's brains out and punctuated the act with a quip, like Deadpool in a dress*; by the time Pip has ended up with Biddy, Estella has possibly ended up with Jaggers**, and poor Herbert (madly in love with Estella in this version) has simply faded from view, it's abundantly clear that Steven Knight has no more interest in the ending of Great Expectations than he had in any of the rest of the story. I don't just mean the plot, either. The themes of the story are almost completely ..read more

Playbill's YouTube channel has shared rehearsal clips of "Where Is Love?" and "Consider Yourself" from the upcoming New York City Center production, embedded below. And BroadwayWorld has photos from the rehearsal. The cast, led by Benjamin Pajak as Oliver and Julian Lerner as the Artful Dodger, looks great, and I envy you lucky people who get to see this onstage!   ..read more

A particular speech of Mr. Jaggers's from episode 3 neatly sums up this whole enterprise, and Steven Knight's whole approach to Dickens. When Pip asks why Jaggers has been made his guardian, Jaggers answers, "Because I am known to be evil. Celebrated for it. And your benefactor knows that in an evil place like London, attachment to virtue would be fatal." In almost any other production, that might be conveying something like bitter sarcasm or world-weary lament or at least deliberate exaggeration. In this one, where there is no subtext, subtlety, or wit, and everything is to be taken at face v ..read more

The Dickens Museum has a new exhibition devoted to one of the most pervasive elements of Victorian London: fog. Items on display as part of "A Great and Dirty City: Dickens and the London Fog" include a first edition of Bleak House (with its famous opening description of "fog everywhere") and Dickens's own fire poker, in memory of the coal fires that did so much to produce the fog. The Spectator has an article about the exhibition here ..read more

Watching Steven Knight's Great Expectations, after having watched his A Christmas Carol a few years ago, has driven me relentlessly to one conclusion: Knight just doesn't like Dickens. At all. If Knight had been born hating Dickens and hated him more every day of his life, he couldn't have done him more dirty than he has. Once again we have the characters twisted and distorted out of all recognition. Once again we have a woman put in a degrading sexual position by an older man (a relative, in this case). Once again we have Dickens's quicksilver words discarded for clunky, leaden attempts ..read more

The first episode of the new BBC/FX Great Expectations is now available on Hulu. The Independent opines that, paradoxically, "the desire to sex up Victoriana" is "all very predictable." The Hollywood Reporter states, "What could have been a daring spin on a classic is transformed instead into a dreary slog," and CNN says, "The story ... grinds along sluggishly." According to The Evening Standard, "It’s not so much a dramatisation of Great Expectation, as a hollowing out of it in order to accommodate a very different story and almost unrecognisable characters."&nbs ..read more

If you're in Utica, New York, you'll have a chance to attend the world premiere of Dennis Dewey's new documentary, Mr. Dickens Comes to Uttica. The film tells the story of Dickens's unscheduled layover in Utica during his American tour in 1868 and its effects on the local population. The film premieres at the Oneida County History Center on March 18, and will include an exhibition of artifacts related to Dickens's hotel stay. Go here and here for details!  ..read more

Is the end of February too late to share thoughts on Spirited? :-) I actually started writing this review in December. But what with one thing and another, I got way, way behind. I guess I could always wait till next December, but I'd really like to just get this done and off my plate, so with your kind indulgence, let's have a little Christmas in February! I've seen Spirited called A Christmas Carol from the ghosts' perspective. That's only partially true. It's not actually an adaptation or a remake of A Christmas Carol; rather, it's a peek into a world where A Christ ..read more

The upcoming Encores! production, which will run May 3-14 at New York City Center, will star Lilli Cooper as Nancy, Raúl Esparza as Fagin, Tam Mutu as Bill Sikes, Brad Oscar as Mr. Bumble, Benjamin Pajak as Oliver Twist, and Mary Testa as Widow Corney. More information on the production and on where to purchase tickets is available here. Thanks to Rachel McMillan for the tip ..read more