Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations Reimagined for 2025

Introduction by Marianne Elliott 

When I first approached Great Expectations, I was struck not only by Dickens’s extraordinary storytelling but by its relevance to the world we live in today. Pip’s story is one of ambition, of longing to escape the circumstances of birth, of believing that wealth and status will heal the ache of shame.

In 2025, we still live with those same pressures. Social mobility is fragile, dreams are often defined by money, and yet the true riches we neglect — loyalty, kindness, compassion — are the very ones that sustain us.

Our stage is designed as a memory play, with Pip himself guiding us back through the fog of his past. Memory, after all, is not tidy — it is fragmented, haunted, poetic. We use shifting light, sound, and ensemble movement to show how a boy’s illusions can overwhelm him, and how forgiveness can restore him.

Tonight, we invite you to step into Pip’s journey — from the marshes to London, from the ruins of Satis House to the river’s storm — and to ask yourself: what are your great expectations, and what truly matters when the masks fall away?

(Note: This is an imaginary conversation, a creative exploration of an idea, and not a real speech or event)

Scene 1: The Marshes (Fear & Debt)

The stage opens in near-darkness. Mist coils across the boards. A low tolling bell echoes. From the haze emerges Young Pip, small and trembling, setting flowers on his parents’ graves.

Suddenly, Magwitch bursts from the fog — ragged, shackled, desperate. He seizes Pip, demanding food and a file. Pip’s terror fills the stage. Magwitch’s shadow towers, but his eyes glimmer with a flicker of humanity. Pip promises, through sobs, to bring what he asks.

Adult Pip, stepping into a separate light:
"This was how my life began — in fear, in debt, in the marsh mist that never entirely left me."

As Magwitch retreats into fog, the boy Pip runs, his small figure swallowed by mist. The marsh hums with threat, but also with destiny.

Scene 2: The Gargery Home (Harshness & Kindness)

A cramped kitchen, firelight flickering. Mrs. Joe dominates, rattling pans, wielding her cane — her “tickler.” Pip cowers, while Joe, gentle and bumbling, offers him quiet comfort.

At dinner, Uncle Pumblechook and guests scold Pip for ingratitude. He hides the stolen bread, trembling. His guilt roars louder than their accusations.

Adult Pip:
"The table was a gallows, every plate a witness. I had stolen for a man the world would call a beast. And yet, who was more beastly than those who dined so righteously?"

The scene ends with soldiers at the door, demanding Joe mend handcuffs. The household freezes, Pip paling — his secret crime about to collide with justice.

Scene 3: Satis House (Shame & Longing)

A decayed mansion looms. Chandeliers draped in cobwebs. Clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. Miss Havisham appears — frozen in her tattered bridal gown, a ghost of wealth betrayed.

She commands Pip to “play.” Instead, he encounters Estella — luminous, disdainful. She mocks his coarse hands and boots. Pip blushes, shamed.

Adult Pip:
"She was cruel — and I adored her. She taught me to measure my worth against her contempt. And I have been adding and subtracting ever since."

The scene ends with Pip leaving Satis House, head bowed but heart aflame with dangerous longing. A stopped clock ticks once, then falls silent again.

Scene 4: Apprenticeship (Dreams & Discontent)

Back at the forge, Joe teaches Pip his trade. Sparks fly, warm light glows. Joe is proud, but Pip looks restless, haunted by Estella’s voice.

Miss Havisham formally pays Joe for Pip’s apprenticeship. Joe beams. Pip flushes with shame, certain Estella would sneer at the forge.

Adult Pip:
"It was an honest fire, that forge. But I had seen another kind of flame — the glitter in Estella’s eyes. And already, I was burning for it."

The act closes with Pip hammering iron — sparks lighting his face — but he stares beyond them, dreaming of gentility, blind to the cost.

Scene 5: Great Expectations Announced (The Turning Point)

The Gargery forge fades. A new setting: the tavern, alive with murmurs. Enter Jaggers, crisp and intimidating, his presence cutting through the room like a blade. He announces to Pip that he has “great expectations” — a mysterious benefactor has secured his fortune and future. Pip reels, disbelieving.

Adult Pip (to the audience):
"Hope, pride, shame, and terror — all arrived at once and demanded to be seated at my table."

Pip convinces himself Miss Havisham is the benefactor, and Estella is his reward. He embraces his future, though Joe and Biddy remain wary. In a tender, bittersweet moment, Joe gives Pip his blessing. Pip turns away, his face glowing not with gratitude but ambition.

The forge fire dwindles to a single coal, replaced by the bright, bustling lights of London.

Scene 6: Life with Herbert (Friendship & Frivolity)

London: smoke and chaos, noise and glitter. Pip meets Herbert Pocket, the “pale young gentleman” he once fought at Satis House. They laugh over the memory, and a genuine friendship sparks.

Herbert becomes Pip’s guide to London society — teaching him table manners, social cues, and dreams of success. Together they share optimism but also recklessness, as they spend money they do not have.

Adult Pip:
"In Herbert I found the truest friend, though I treated him then as an accomplice in vanity rather than the saint of loyalty he would prove to be."

The stage flickers between lighthearted banquets and ominous shadows of unpaid bills — the comedy of youth shadowed by debt.

Scene 7: Jaggers’s Power (Law & Fear)

Jaggers’s chambers: ledgers stacked like battlements, shadows looming. Clients beg, plead, shrink before his cutting cross-examination. He dominates the room like a judge, jury, and executioner.

Pip watches in awe and unease. He notices Molly, Jaggers’s housekeeper, her scarred hands strong as iron. Jaggers highlights them with theatrical menace, using her as a symbol of control. Pip shivers, not yet understanding the hidden story.

Adult Pip:
"It was not only money that commanded fear, but knowledge of secrets. In Jaggers’s office, guilt was currency, and he had the only mint."

The scene shifts from the fearsome law courts back to Pip’s restless ambition. The world of crime and the world of gentility feel strangely alike.

Scene 8: Estella Returns (Illusion Fed)

Satis House, draped in its eternal bridal shroud. Miss Havisham sits enthroned, Estella by her side — now grown, radiant, distant.

Pip is struck dumb by her beauty. Estella treats him kindly but without warmth. Miss Havisham leans forward, urging Pip to “love her, love her, love her.” Pip obeys with his whole heart, blinded by longing.

Adult Pip:
"She was the flame I would burn for, though I mistook ashes for fire."

The act closes with Pip stepping into the light, believing destiny itself had been promised. Miss Havisham smiles faintly, a puppet master hiding her strings. Estella, silent, stares out past him into a future he cannot see.

Blackout.

Scene 9: Drummle’s Rivalry (Signals & Misreadings)

A London salon assembled from light and laughter: chandeliers like iced fruit, mirrors repeating the same precious people. A string quartet whispers civility. Estella—poised, self-possessed—moves through the room as if time were calibrated to her footsteps. Pip trails a heartbeat behind, eager, proud, frightened of seeming either.

Enter Bentley Drummle: heavy, handsome in the way of blunt objects, a gentleman stamped by money rather than shaped by character. He speaks little, but his ownership of space is a grammar everyone grasps. He watches Estella the way hunters learn a horizon.

Adult Pip (to us):
“He stood as if civilization had dressed a stone and called it eligible.”

Small courtesies become skirmishes. Cards, conversation, a glass set down with too much confidence—Drummle claims trivial victories that feel, to Pip, like omens. Herbert tries to buoy him with jokes that land like lifebuoys just out of reach.

Miss Havisham’s ghostly influence flickers—sometimes literal: a projection of Satis House’s stopped clocks slips across the salon walls when Estella refuses warmth. She and Drummle exchange a glance: not passion, exactly—strategy recognizing strategy. Estella collects attention with the cool precision of someone taught that emotion is a liability.

Pip, cornered into a polite tableau with Drummle, forces words.

Pip
You admire beauty without understanding it.

Drummle (flat)
Understanding is not required.

Estella’s fan closes on a breath; the quartet pauses on a hinge of silence. Pip stands straighter, as if posture could be proof.

Later, a smaller room—lamplight tightened to intimacy. Estella and Pip talk as if over a chessboard with missing kings.

Pip
If I had any claim—

Estella (gently)
You have none.

She isn’t cruel, merely accurate. Pip chooses to feel wounded rather than informed.

Adult Pip
“She warned me with kindness. I refused safety with pride.”

A final image: Drummle offering his arm; Estella rests fingertips there as one would place a pawn before sacrificing it. Pip watches, mouth composed, heart in riot. The salon resumes its glitter, but a hairline crack runs through the mirror. It will widen.

Blackout.

Scene 10: Pip in Debt (The Velvet Noose)

A kinetic montage: bills slip beneath doors like pale eels; tailors measure air and invoice hope; dinner plates clatter under compliments; ledgers spread like winter on a desk. Pip and Herbert—partners in optimism—flip coins they do not own.

Adult Pip
“We called it living. The bills called it arithmetic.”

Wemmick appears in two lights: in Jaggers’s office he is granite—nods, receipts, a jaw that files emotions to dust; at his home, projected as a miniature castle with a drawbridge, he’s whimsical, kind, saving laughter in jars. He tutors Pip in the art of surviving London without being eaten by it, but Pip treats prudence like a provincial habit.

Dinner with creditors in disguise: men who praise while calculating. Herbert whispers budgets between jokes; Pip hears melody, not message. A tailor’s ribbon becomes a noose in silhouette, then resolves back into fabric—just style again, for now.

Pip turns twenty-one. He walks to Jaggers with the expectation a sentence will be pronounced: You belong, and here is the proof. Jaggers hands him an allowance instead; the word “benefactor” remains faceless.

Jaggers
Forms are everything, Mr. Pip. Fortune is a form.

Pip nods as if initiated; inside, he is hollowed. The scene edges into melancholy: Herbert counting with sincerity; Pip counting reputation. They sign things. The audience can hear the wet scratch of pen nibs, a sound like tides going out.

Adult Pip
“We mistook applause for prosperity. The city applauded.”

Night. Pip alone with candle and reflection. He drafts a letter to Joe, tears it, drafts another, tears it. Shame is a hand on his shoulder; vanity says “tomorrow.” He sleeps in daylight and dreams of iron—Joe’s forge ringing like a conscience he has moved across a continent to mute.

A tiny, hopeful beat: Pip arranges, secretly through Wemmick, help for Herbert—an annuity that kindness signs where pride will not. The act is unadvertised, the audience allowed to see Pip’s better self working behind his worst habits.

But the velvet noose tightens; the bills do not applaud back. The montage resumes: coin to palm, palm to ledger, ledger to silence.

Blackout.

Scene 11: Magwitch Revealed (Storm & Parentage)

Thunder speaks first. A window lashes rain across itself. The set shrinks to a lodging-room with a table like a battlement. A candle is lit, struggles, perseveres. Pip waits inside his own expectation; every footstep in the hall is prophecy.

The door opens. Magwitch enters from the weather as if the storm were his herald—older, scarred, eyes blazing with the joy of a plan long kept. He grips Pip’s hands with fierce tenderness.

Magwitch
Look at what you are, dear boy. Look what I made you.

Pip recoils—the perfume of gentility is no match for a sudden gust of marsh air. He forces politeness; his face is treason.

Adult Pip
“He had come to claim a son he had purchased with hunger.”

Magwitch lays out the tale: Australia, fortunes wrestled from brutality, pounds shipped home like prayers with Pip’s name on them. He calls Pip “my gentleman,” and the phrase is both crown and shackle.

Pip’s assumptions detonate silently: Miss Havisham is not his patron; Estella not his destiny; wealth not a staircase but a story authored by a criminal the world despises. The candle gutters; the storm insists.

Magwitch produces the old file—memory’s metal—now only a relic. Pip stares as if it were an x-ray of his soul.

He offers Magwitch a chair, water, warmth; his hands shake with manners that cannot translate into love. He looks at the window as if rescue might be weather.

Magwitch (softening)
I watched you from far, proud as a king with a son at court.

Pip’s defenses crack—compassion’s first hairline line.

Adult Pip
“I owed him everything and could barely offer him a seat. Pride is a poor host.”

Practical fear intrudes: Magwitch is an escaped felon; discovery means death. Pip bolts the door, lowers the light, starts planning. The room realigns around obligation. He fetches Herbert, whispers, draws maps in steam on the window. Magwitch dozes, a lion finally allowed to sleep indoors.

The candle, now steady, makes a small sun. Pip watches it, learning a new weather.

Blackout.

Scene 12: Estella’s Engagement (The Broken Promise That Wasn’t)

Satis House—still life in ruin. Clocks forever at twenty minutes to nine; a bridal table permanent in its last terrible course. Miss Havisham sits like a monarch of ashes; Estella stands beside her, flawless and frost-lit. Pip arrives carrying the storm inside his coat.

Miss Havisham (hungry)
Love her.

Pip turns to Estella—every word of his youth preparing for this sentence.
Pip
I love you. I have loved you since I first knew what shame was.

Estella (clear)
I am to be married to Mr. Drummle.

Silence moves in, pulls up a chair. The set seems to tilt, though it does not. Pip remains upright through will alone.

Adult Pip
“There are truths so simple they split you.”

Pip pleads—not for pity, for revision of the universe. Estella listens as one listens to weather reports: important, impersonal. She says she warned him; she says she has no heart to give. Her eyes ask him to stop making this harder for both of them.

Miss Havisham watches, a scientist observing a reaction she designed and now cannot bear. Pip turns to her with a wounded fury that makes him finally older than his illusions.

Pip
You taught her to break hearts and used mine as lesson one.

A tremor goes through Miss Havisham. For a second, the bridal tatters seem to weigh what they always weighed: not silk, guilt.

Miss Havisham (small)
What have I done?

Memory flashes—the girl Estella taken, polished into an instrument. Miss Havisham reaches for Pip; he steps back from the heat of a regret too late.

Estella extends her hand. Pip takes it, bows his head to the fact and not the dream. It is a terrible grace. He turns to go—no flourish, no curse—just the dignity of ending.

Adult Pip
“I left a house where time had stopped and discovered it had not. It had been running past me while I waited for a clock to love me.”

As he exits, a candle on the great table leans toward flame; Miss Havisham shudders, as if already feeling the fire that will later find her. Estella remains, a figure etched by training and loneliness. The stopped clocks are louder now, or perhaps Pip finally hears them.

Blackout.

Scene 13: Orlick’s Trap (The Limekiln)

A barren stage—just a limekiln structure glowing faintly red, like a heart about to rupture. Pip enters cautiously, clutching the note that lured him here. Shadows lengthen; silence is predatory.

Suddenly Orlick steps from the dark, iron bar in hand. His voice drips bitterness: he blames Pip for every misfortune—his dismissal, his thwarted desires for Biddy, even Mrs. Joe’s decline. Orlick ties Pip to a post, chains rattling like memory.

Orlick
You always stood in the way. You, the blacksmith’s brat playing gentleman.

Pip struggles, calls for help. Adult Pip narrates, torn between fear and self-reproach:
“How thin pride feels when death is the better-dressed guest.”

As Orlick raises the bar, lights flare: Herbert and rescuers rush in, driving Orlick back. The chain falls. Pip gasps at life returned.

Blackout, heartbeats echoing.

Scene 14: The River Escape (Flight & Fall)

The Thames—projected waters flowing across the stage. A boat glides, crewed by Pip, Herbert, and the disguised Magwitch. The river is both freedom and doom.

They row toward the steamer that will take Magwitch to safety. But shadows appear: officers in pursuit, with Compeyson among them. A chase erupts—oars splashing, lanterns flashing.

Magwitch lunges at Compeyson; the two struggle in the river’s black mouth. Compeyson vanishes beneath the waves, dragged to death. Magwitch surfaces, bloodied and broken, shackled once more.

Adult Pip
“He had drowned the gentleman villain, but not his own chains.”

The steamer sails away. The stage darkens as the fugitives are led back. Pip kneels by Magwitch, promising not abandonment but loyalty.

Scene 15: Magwitch’s Death (Mercy at the End)

A prison cell, stark and cold. Magwitch lies weak, breath rattling. Pip sits beside him, his hand steady in Magwitch’s. The man who once terrified him now looks like a child, broken by the world.

Pip leans close:
Your daughter lives. She is beautiful. She is loved.

Magwitch’s eyes soften—hope planted at the last moment. He squeezes Pip’s hand, exhales, and is gone.

Adult Pip
“He left not with chains, but with a name whispered like a prayer. Father. Benefactor. Man.”

Immediately after, Pip collapses under illness and debt. A new light reveals Joe, gentle and steadfast, nursing him. Joe pays Pip’s debts quietly, with the same dignity he always had. Pip weeps—not at poverty, but at undeserved grace.

Scene 16: Satis House Ruins (An Ending, and a Beginning)

A vast skeletal structure of Satis House, walls collapsed, weeds breaking through. Pip stands older, humbler, gazing at what once enthroned Miss Havisham.

Enter Estella, subdued, softened by suffering. She speaks without bitterness: Drummle is dead; hardship has tempered her. She and Pip reflect on the illusions that bound them, and the pain that freed them.

In Dickens’s original ending, they part as friends. Estella exits into mist, Pip alone but at peace.
In the revised ending, they walk hand in hand toward the horizon, shadows touching, future uncertain but shared.

Adult Pip (final line):
“We are not promised great expectations. Only the chance to choose mercy, and to begin again.”

Lights fade. A golden tableau of all who shaped him—Joe, Biddy, Herbert, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Estella—surround Pip as he writes his story at a desk.

Blackout.

Final Thoughts by Marianne Elliott

As Pip learns, wealth and appearances crumble. What endures is love freely given, loyalty offered without condition, and mercy that cannot be bought.

For me, the heart of this play is not Estella’s beauty or Miss Havisham’s grandeur, but Joe’s quiet forgiveness, Magwitch’s unexpected devotion, Herbert’s friendship, and Pip’s own recognition that he has been blind to them all.

We live in a time of spectacle and distraction, but theatre allows us to sit together and remember what we often forget: that the truest transformations are not those the world applauds, but the ones that happen in the quiet chambers of the heart.

As the curtain falls, I hope you carry away not simply Dickens’s story, but your own reflections — about where you place value, whom you honor, and how you forgive.

That, to me, is the great expectation of theatre itself.

Short Bios:

Creative Team

Jack Thorne (Playwright)
An Olivier and BAFTA Award-winning writer, Jack Thorne is celebrated for bringing epic stories to life on stage with humanity and imagination. His works include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, A Christmas Carol (Old Vic), and His Dark Materials for the BBC. With Great Expectations, he reimagines Dickens as a memory play, exploring the collision of class, ambition, and redemption.

Marianne Elliott (Director)
One of the UK’s most acclaimed directors, Marianne Elliott has helmed landmark productions including War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Angels in America. Known for her innovative use of design, movement, and light, she brings both spectacle and intimacy to Dickens’s world, making Pip’s journey resonate powerfully for today’s audiences.

Characters

Pip (Philip Pirrip)
An orphan raised “by hand” by his harsh sister, Pip begins life in fear and longing. Haunted by Estella’s scorn and intoxicated by dreams of wealth, he mistakes gentility for greatness. His journey from the marshes to London, and finally to humility, is one of disillusionment, loyalty, and redemption.

Estella
Miss Havisham’s beautiful ward, raised to break men’s hearts as vengeance against betrayal. Cold, poised, and distant, Estella captivates Pip but cannot return his love. Yet suffering softens her, revealing a humanity long denied.

Miss Havisham
A wealthy recluse, jilted on her wedding day and frozen in that moment ever since. She raises Estella as her instrument of revenge, but too late realizes the cruelty she has wrought. Her fiery end reflects the ruin of obsession.

Magwitch (Abel Magwitch)
An escaped convict whose terrifying presence in Pip’s childhood becomes the source of Pip’s fortune. Brutalized by society but fiercely loyal, Magwitch dies redeemed by Pip’s compassion and the knowledge that his daughter Estella lives.

Joe Gargery
A humble blacksmith and Pip’s brother-in-law, Joe is the embodiment of kindness, patience, and forgiveness. Though Pip abandons him in shame, Joe rescues him in illness, proving that true greatness lies in love.

Jaggers
A formidable London lawyer, feared and respected in equal measure. Guardian of Pip’s “expectations,” he embodies the cold, transactional world of power — yet carries secrets that bind Pip’s fate to Estella’s.