Review Roundup: Eddie Izzard Stars In Charles Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Eddie Izzard stars in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations at The Greenwich House Theater (27 Barrow Street). See what the critics had to say below!

In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Eddie portrays 19 characters in a classic tale of convicts, mystery, friendship, rivalry, unrequited love, revenge, and redemption.

Dickens' novel was adapted for the stage by Mark Izzard and is directed by Selina Cadell. The design team is Tom Piper (set), Tyler Elich/Lightswitch Inc. (lighting), Tom Piper and Libby da Costa (costume stylists), and Didi Hopkins (Movement Director).  It is produced by Westbeth Entertainment and Mick Perrin Worldwide.

Actor, comedian, and multi-marathon runner Eddie Izzard's boundary-pushing career spans all of these with record-breaking comedy tours and critically acclaimed film, TV, and theatre performances.  But few know that acting was her first love. This show offers the chance to see Eddie in a solo performance of the master storyteller's beloved epic, Great Expectations.

Eddie, who is dyslexic, had never read a great work of literature, but knowing that she was exactly 150 years younger than Dickens (7 Feb 1812 to 7 Feb 1962) decided to start by reading Great Expectations. She was then inspired to develop it as a solo performance for the stage.

Naveen Kumar, The New York Times: It's a rare moment, of course, as Izzard, the British comedian and actor, has to get through the whole of Charles Dickens's densely plotted novel in two hours (with a 15-minute intermission). But these fleeting glimpses of her sly, sideways persona, honed on stand-up stages beginning in the late 1980s, are the highlights of this otherwise straightforward, relatively dry retelling, which was adapted by her brother, Mark Izzard, and opened at the Greenwich House Theater on Thursday.

Thom Geier, The Wrap: Unlike Jefferson Mays' tour-de-force version of "A Christmas Carol" now playing on Broadway, director Selina Cadell's production does not rely on high-tech set and lighting design, quick costume changes and other visual effects. This is theater as storytelling in its most elemental sense, with Izzard herself as the biggest special effect.