SAN DIEGO PRODUCTION : ‘HARD TIMES’: IT IS THE BEST OF TIMES FOR DICKENS

Theatrical adaptations are not new to Charles Dickens. In his day, as many as 20 London stage companies competed to adapt his stories the moment they came off the press. Although his popularity never ended, his theatrical presence has waxed and waned. In recent times, it has been waxing again, thanks to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” and the current Broadway hit “Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

Now there’s another company to thank. The San Diego Repertory Theatre has just unveiled a delicious adaptation of “Hard Times” that is playing in the Lyceum Space through July 12. The script, by Stephen Jeffreys, is a challenging one: It’s 3 1/2 hours long and requires two actors and two actresses to play 20 parts. Under Sabin Epstein’s eloquent direction, the action, music, lights and setting harmonize into an affecting whole that is a privilege to watch.

One of Dickens’ greatest strengths was his ability to create larger-than-life characters. Another and even better aspect of his genius was the way his milieus breathed just like another character in the story. In “Hard Times” that role belongs to the Industrial Revolution, a time when machines squeezed out people and reason was valued over feelings.

The scene is Coketown, a mid-19th-Century English industrial city. It is a squalid and cluttered place. A window pane is smudged with soot from the city’s heart--its factory. At the edges of crowded living spaces, chairs are stacked on chairs that are stacked on tables. A few long, thin stripped trees pierce parts of the stage and extend uneasily to the ceiling. The audience is seated in two semi-circles around the stage, hemming the players in, heightening the sense that these people are trapped in their situations.

And trapped they are, from the man who owns the factory to the people who work in it. The problem in Coketown is not just poverty of the pocket, it is poverty of the spirit. As the machines moved in, a reverence for rigidity and reason overtook feeling. Wonder became a frivolity to be punished in the classroom; compassion was becoming as outdated as hand-woven cloth.

Herein lies the beauty of having four actors play all 20 parts. Despite the actors’ considerable skill in making their characters distinctly individual, the fact stands that under their various accents, postures, attitudes and styles of dress, all these people who find each other so impossible to like and understand are the very same human beings.

Take Bounderby, the big, blustering bag of wind who owns the factory, and Harthouse, the lazy, heavy-lidded seducer who is after Bounderby’s wife. Both are played by Robert Machray. The suitors seem different to her, but they’re really two sides of the same selfish coin.

Then there is Louisa. Not only does Darla Cash portray Bounderby’s sweet, sad, love-starved wife, she is also Bounderby’s doting, neglected mother and the shrill chairwoman of a union fighting for rights in his factory.

Allison Brennan stands out even among this excellent ensemble as Louisa’s best friend, Sissy; her self-involved mother, Mrs. Gradgrind; and her jealous foe, Mrs. Sparsit. As the outrageously snooty, purse-lipped Sparsit, she daintily takes the tiniest of comic morsels and devours it before your eyes.

Richard Farrell brings great sensitivity to the roles of Louisa’s father, Gradgrind; her brother, Tom; and the decent worker, Stephen Blackpool, whose good name Tom blackens to save his own.

Also divided up among the cast are more than half a dozen others ranging from waiters and girlfriends to the maligned salt-of-the-earth circus folk.

The changes from character to character are often swift. Sometimes the new personality is introduced with narration; often it is presaged by no more than the change of a scarf or a hat or the pinning back of a jacket corner on Ray C. Naylor’s simple, well-chosen costumes.

Accompanying the personalities are D. Martyn Bookwalter’s softly weaving lights and Victor Zupanc’s original score, conceived in fragments like a Greek chorus and performed by Zupanc as an on-stage musician with a variety of instruments, including the piano, guitar, drum, accordion, a child’s plastic recorder and a glass bottle that he blows into.

The beautifully detailed set, also designed by Bookwalter, provides a multitude of distinct living spaces within the tiny Space arena. Epstein keeps his cast flowing so smoothly in and out of these areas that it is a shock to be reminded at the curtain call that there were only four actors after all.

It is a pleasure to see this wonderful classic brought to life without a single wasted motion or glance. Yes, 3 1/2 hours is a long time to sit and watch a show. Yes, “Hard Times” is worth it.

‘HARD TIMES’ By Charles Dickens. Adapted by Stephen Jeffreys. Director Sabin Epstein. Original score by Victor Zupanc. Set and lighting by D. Martyn Bookwalter. Costumes by Ray C. Naylor. With Richard Farrell, Robert Machray, Darla Cash, Allison Brennan and Victor P. Zupanc. At 8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sundays with Sunday matinees at 2. Closes July 12. At the San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza.

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