We set eyes on Pip, the protagonist of Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel Great Expectations, for the first time in the churchyard where his parents and brothers are buried. The vision of the boy in front of the ruins of his family is one of rude survivalism. It’s a trait that will see Pip through the misadventures ahead – but the sorrow of surviving on these terms is unmistakable.
However, Tanika Gupta’s adaptation of Great Expectations, currently showing at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre, opens with “Pipli” buzzing around, doing cartwheels, at ease in his world. Gupta’s version is set in Bengal in 1899, where alarming rumours of an imminent partition of the province have spread.
