Nae Expectations

I wish that there were more excellent plays like this performed in Glasgow. I think that we really suffer from the allegedly temporary closure of the Citizens’ Theatre, where I saw so many great plays over the years. It must have been closed for at least five years now. Anyway, this evening we went to the Tron Theatre to see Nae Expectations, a Scottish take on Dickens’ Great Expectations. It was really brilliant, as were each and every member of its small cast. The best known actor was Karen Dunbar, who played a truly disturbing Miss Haversham, veering between playful and evil. The rest of the cast were Simon Donaldson, Jamie Marie Leary, Gerry Mulgrew, Grant Smeaton and Gavin Jon Wright, and I mention them all because they were all so outstanding. They have all done some television and film work but according to the programme they are mainly theatre actors. The play itself was very well adapted from the novel although in order to stage it with a small cast and keep it to a reasonable length it was simplified quite a bit. This meant that some of the characters were less nuanced, and some were missed out altogether. Some of the events, for example the ending, were different too. All the same it was a pleasure to watch this quirky and very Scottish version of Dickens’ classic novel.