Following her acclaimed New York run Eddie Izzard*, who recently said that she would also like to be addressed as Suzy, brings her one woman show to London’s West end stage for a limited 6 week engagement performing Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, playing 19 of the characters in a unique re-telling from Eddie - a classic tale of convicts, mystery, friendship, rivalry, unrequited love, revenge, and redemption.

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.

Dickens’ novel was adapted for the stage by Mark Izzard and is directed by Selina Cadell. Cadell said, “I find the combination of Eddie Izzard’s idiosyncratic wit and Charles Dickens’ ingenious storytelling irresistible and am looking forward to sharing it with UK audiences.”

Great Expectations is the 13th novel by Charles Dickens. Published in 1861, it depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical, All the Year Round. Set in Kent and London in the 1820s to 1830s, it contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colorful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. 

Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations running time is approximately two hours plus an intermission.

MARK IZZARD (Adapter). Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is not Mark and Eddie’s first collaboration. In 1972 at Bede’s School in Eastbourne, UK Mark penned a play which might possibly have been called Hey! Watch That Fork! in which the all-boys cast donned jackets and ties over their pajamas and told a haunting story of death and cuisine. Serving as promoter and box office manager, Eddie (the younger sibling) sold tickets. Fast forward to recent years and the pair continues to work together including Mark translating Eddie’s stand up shows into French, German and Spanish, as Mark is pretty fluent in those languages, being a qualified translator, and he speak it better than the other one. “smartly streamlined adaptation ” Cititour.com