Pride and Prejudice<\/a>, which was also performed by three actors. The terrific Luke Barton returns with his ability to make us do a double take every time he comes out as someone new. Same with Louise Beresford, whose vocal impressions are astounding. Eddy Payne, in the title role, is the show\u2019s engine, zipping around the stage nonstop as he narrates the twists and turns of David Copperfield\u2019s life with the energy of a schoolboy on summer holiday.<\/p>\n![\"PRESS](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/PRESS-PIC-David-Copperfield-Production-34.jpg\" "\\"PRESS")
Eddy Payne as David, Luke Barton as Mr. Creakle, and Louise Beresford at Steerforth in David Copperfield, directed by Abigail Pickard Price for the Guildford Shakespeare Company, at 59E59 Theaters.
(\u00a9 Harry Elletson)<\/p>\n
Price, who also directs, and her colleagues had to make significant cuts, naturally enough. Peggotty\u2019s suitor, Barkis, might have been willing, but he never gets a chance to woo her here. That\u2019s fine when we\u2019re given other favorites who play oversize roles on David\u2019s road to becoming a writer.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell, the story is about the life journey of David Copperfield, \u201ca posthumous child,\u201d born fatherless to a na\u00efve mother who marries an ogre named Mr. Murdstone. Sent to a boarding school, David befriends the cheeky Steerforth before being forced into child labor in London, where he meets the kindly but insolvent Mr. Micawber. His aunt, Betsey Trotwood takes him in, and he gets a job with the deceitful Uriah Heep. Along the way David makes a bad marriage to Dora but eventually finds peace with Agnes and enjoys a successful writing career.<\/p>\n
Barton and Beresford play about 18 characters between them, regularly dashing offstage for a costume change or swapping one hat for another (Neil Irish\u2019s distinctive dresses make it easy to keep track of who\u2019s who). Beresford is especially adept at switching from Miss Betsey to Uriah in a flash. Barton, often in drag, is also a master shapeshifter, morphing from Peggotty to the simple-minded Mr. Dick so completely that you might swear they were played by different actors.<\/p>\n
![\"PRESS](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/PRESS-PIC-David-Copperfield-Production-164.jpg\" "\\"PRESS")
Eddy Payne and Louise Beresford in David Copperfield, directed by Abigail Pickard Price for the Guildford Shakespeare Company, at 59E59 Theaters.
(\u00a9 Harry Elletson)<\/p>\n
Price and the cast have infused delightful stagecraft into this production. Mr. Murdstone is cleverly depicted by a tall hat and long coat on a coatrack while Barton growls behind. Li\u2019l Emily\u2019s dress unfurls to become the sea. The abusive headmaster Mr. Creakle towers above David in a long gown like a menacing specter. And Mr. Spenlow is represented by a Punch puppet. These creative grace notes add a spontaneous whimsy that feels Dickensian in its way.<\/p>\n
Irish\u2019s no-frills set, a somewhat rickety-looking series of windowed panels, does the job well enough, easily shifting from the nautical-themed home where Mr. Peggotty and Emily live, to the law office of Mr. Wickfield where David and Uriah work. Mark Dymock\u2019s colorful lighting design assists with making the scene changes clear, and Matt Eaton\u2019s sound design pipes subtle background music into it all to good effect.<\/p>\n
The thing about Dickens\u2019s novel is that it gets most of its magic from its larger-than-life characters and their emotional growth rather than its meandering plot. That time-intensive development is something that you simply cannot re-create onstage. Price knows this and hasn\u2019t tried to do that here. But she and the cast have given a satisfying romp through the novel with the kind of creative flourishes that can only be found onstage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Louise Beresford, Luke Barton, and Eddy Payne in David Copperfield, directed by Abigail Pickard Price for the Guildford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-259545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"PRESS](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/PRESS-PIC-David-Copperfield-Production-156-2.jpg\" "\\"PRESS")
Louise Beresford, Luke Barton, and Eddy Payne in David Copperfield, directed by Abigail Pickard Price for the Guildford Shakespeare Company, at 59E59 Theaters.