Bleak Expectations

I'm not much of a Charles Dickens aficionado going into this; most I read was some abridged versions  when I was a kid. But I was mostly curious about the venue - Commonwealth House, which apparently is in Royal Commonwealth Society of Malaysia private club, a place I never knew existed until this month. But that's just me lah. And it's in the middle of a residential area, which I guess is great if you're a member living in the area, one could technically walk there or whatever. 

Bleak Expectations is a hilarious pastiche of everything Dickensian.

Follow the unlikely journey of Pip Bin from earnest child to titan of Victorian industry.

It's based on a BBC4 radio series. 

Only decided to go there on the last night of the run, which was Saturday. Parking was kinda dicey in that there wasn't a lot of on site parking and understandably, the area residents wouldn't want their roads blocked by the club members and guests, so... there was a lot of stacked parking? Guards were ready to provide pen and paper for people to write their phone numbers down to leave on the dashboard. 

Only good thing about the venue was that there was boozy refreshment options (beer, wine, etc), as well as some finger food options (was sorely tempted by the samosas). I got a glass of prosecco (RM35) to sip on. Since it was free seating, I opted for the bar seating at the back, cos it was better than me staring at the back of someone's head for the whole show, and I needed a place to set down my drink and bag. It's mostly a lot of expats, with or without families, in attendance. 

It's the now elderly Pip Bin telling his life story, with the rest of the company playing things out on stage. 

It was about 2 hours long, with a 15 minute intermission. 

NGL, for how funny the character names are (evil Gently Benevolent, Flora Dies-Early, etc), the play was really bleak as hell with Pip's luck kept going up (got rich from investing the rubbish bin) and down (evil guardian Mr Benevolent who kept trying to saboh him by wanting to kill him, marry his sister, and steal their family fortune). People playing multiple characters. If you know enough of Dickens's work, you'd recognise the characters and references. I might enjoy it more if I wasn't also fighting a headache. But it was still pretty funny. And it ended around 10 something? To be fair, it did say the start time was gonna be 7 p.m. and the show only started around 7.15 p.m., so... 

I was more annoyed when the car I had parked behind actually called me as I was on my way to the car. OMG woman, can you wait for a while? I only lingered for a little bit to check out what I can of the place cos I had never been there before. Oy vey.