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Home > Theatre > Small Expectations
SMALL EXPECTATIONS |
| Pip | |
| Estella Scott | MARIA FRIEDMAN |
| Little Nell | ANNETTE LYONS |
| Narrator/ Barry Norman/ Derek Jameson (1)/ Melvyn Bragg/ Toastmaster/ Bob Geldof/ Eamon Andrews/ Ken Livingstone | PHIL CORNWELL |
| Mr Gargery/ Sir Jasper Jaggers/ PW Botha/ Arts Council Man | TERENCE BAYLER |
| Mrs Gargery/ Ms Haversham/ The Rt Hon Mrs Margaret Thatcher PC MP | ANGELA RICHARDS |
| Herbert Pocket/ Prince Bentley/ Young Bobby | TERRY SHEPPARD |
| Magwitch/ Derek Jameson (2)/ Sir Alistair Burnett/ John Carlisle MP/ Mr Micawber/ Mrs Gamp/ Fagin/ PC Sykes | CHRIS FAIRBANK |
| South Bank Trio | WENDY BALDOCK CHRISSIE KENDALL ANNETTE LYONS |
| Motot Cycle Messenger/ Julian Lloyd Webber | NICK RAYMOND |
| Citizens/ Toyboys/ Assorted Media Hacks/ Victims of Feminism | WENDY BALDOCK SANDY HAMILTON CHRISSIE KENDALL ANNETTE LYONS ROLAND BRINE NICK RAYMOND CARL TOOP |
| Director | NED SHERRIN |
| Set Designer | DAPHNE DARE |
| Costume Designer | JENNY TIRIMANI |
| Musical Director | JONATHAN COHEN |
| Musical Staging | LINDSAY DOLAN |
| Lighting | BENNY BALL |
| Sound | PAUL FARRAH SOUND |
| ACT ONE | |
| Lovable Cockneys | |
| Islington, Oh Islington | |
| I Was A Wimp | |
| Toy Boys | |
| Pretty Dumb | |
| The Style Rap | |
| A Little Help From Estella | |
| The Day All The Love Songs Came True | |
| The South Bank Show | |
| What's In It For Me? | |
| A Weekend At Windsor | |
| ACT TWO | |
| It's The Eighties | |
| Wapping | |
| Men | |
| Not Funny | |
| Everybody Say Sanction | |
| Victoria Values | |
| Two Fingers |
"So, farewell then, GLC. And farewell too the GLC-sponsored satirical revues of Alistair Beaton and Ned Sherrin; having gleefully traduced Gilbert and Sullivan in the Ratepayers' Iolanthe and The Metropolitan Mikado, they now train the pop-gun of their wit on Dickens.
Here, Pip appears as the black adopted son of middle-class 'progressives' from Islington who have emigrated to Billericay; Magwitch is an uncouth reporter from The Sun looking for a heartwarming story; Miss Havisham has turned into "Ms" Havisham, the voracious cocktail feminist editor of Spare Side magazine; her ward is a dumb blonde newsreader by the name of Estella Scott; and Herbert Pocket is a coke-snorting entrepreneur who launches young Pip from his warehouse flat in Docklands.
The up-and-coming graffiti artist gets his face in The Face, appears on The South Bank Show and exhibits at the Tate before learning his true parentage on This is Your Life.
The strength of the authors' earlier outings lay in Sullivan's music, and the signal weakness of this entertainment is not its feeble plot nor its reliance on the weasel bite of topicality so much as the score of the American composer Gerrard Kenny. Despite some highly proficient singing and dancing from Michael Seraphim and Maria Friedman in the principal roles, it is less of an end-of-an-era romp than a trite and unamusing end-of-the-pier show." Martin Cropper, The Times (31 March 1986)
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Musical spoof 'torn ruthlessly from the pages of Dickens' by Alastair Beaton and Ned Sherrin with music by Gerard Kenny.