Notes on the tour :
If you do not know the Minack Theatre check out their web site. It is a magnificent open air auditorium carved out of the cliffside overlooking Porthcurno Bay. The Tower has been a regular visitor since 1975. Although we only play from Monday to Friday you will need to be available at the theatre from 12.00 noon on Saturday 25th August to 12.00 noon on Saturday 1st September to rehearse and help get our equipment in and out of the theatre. Everyone is expected to pay their own travel and living expenses and organise their own accommodation. Company members usually club together to rent cottages, so this need not be too expensive.

The text :
Please contact the Tower Office for an electronic version or you can borrow a hard copy.
(N.B. This is the original text, so ignore the Christmas references)

The Director writes :
Nick Warburton is primarily a successful radio and television writer. He prepared this adaptation of David Copperfield as a Christmas show for a long established Cambridge non-professional company and I think it has the scale and pace that will appeal to a Minack audience. The text is not published and Nick is happy to co-operate in tailoring it to our needs, so it should be an exciting project to work on. Compressing an 800 page book into an evening in the theatre requires the ability to convey several chapters of character development in a single moment. I shall be aiming for a presentation that captures the drama and humour in a stylish, but not over-stylised manner. Actors should be able to move easily between narration and dialogue and from one character to another. Most people will need to do some doubling. I want to get a balance that keeps everyone reasonably busy without destroying the credibility of individual characters.

The cast :
There are over 50 speaking roles. This is a list of the core characters. I've grouped them to make sense of their relationships not in order of importance. The story spans over 30 years so I have not been specific about most of the ages.

David : Onstage throughout, observing narrating and engaging in the action. The audience must warm to him. His narrator age is probably 30 something, but he also needs to be convincing as a younger man.
Young Davy : David as a child, acting out scenes of his boyhood, overseen by his older self. Davy only appears in the first half, but it is a key role and needs an actor who can cope vocally and technically with the Minack theatre. I would consider a boy or girl or a physically slight young man or woman.
Clara Copperfield : David's mother. A young widow, pretty and childlike. Unable to withstand the pressure from her overbearing second husband.
Mr. Murdstone : Clara's second husband. Archetypal wicked stepfather and thorough- going hypocrite.
Jane Murdstone : His sister and accomplice.
Betsey Trotwood : The sister of David's late father. Forceful, opinionated, eccentric, but her outward severity hides a heart of gold.
Mr. Dick : A charming gentleman of uncertain mental stability who Betsey has saved from incarceration in an asylum.
Peggotty : Born and brought up in Yarmouth. Clara's maid/David's nanny. They don't come more good-hearted than this.
Daniel Peggotty : Peggotty's brother. Salt of the earth (or possibly sea) fisherman. Undemonstrative but deeply caring, and dignified in the face of terrible misfortune.
Ham : His nephew and adopted son. Takes after his uncle.
Emily : Daniel's niece and adopted daughter. Pretty, lively and with ideas dangerously above her station. A few years younger than Ham. Goes from childhood to early womanhood.
Mrs. Gummidge : Widow of Mr. Peggotty's partner who he has taken into his home. Enjoys nothing more than being miserable. Lovely comic scene-stealer.
Barkis : The carrier who drives between David's home village and Yarmouth. Inarticulately in love with Peggotty.
Martha : A former schoolfriend of Emily's who has "fallen"
Mr. Wickfield : A country solicitor whose increasing dependence on alcohol following the death of his wife seriously undermines his professional competence.
Agnes : His daughter. Devoted to her father and desperate to help him. Charming, modest, shrewdly intelligent and in love with David.
Uriah Heep : Wickfield's clerk. One of Dickens's monsters. His endlessly professed humility masks a plot to worm his way into partnership with Wickfield and defraud him. Dickens describes him as constantly writhing.
Mrs. Heep : Uriah's mother. You can see where he gets it from.
Steerforth : A few years older than David. They meet at school and David looks up to him. He is good looking, utterly charming, intelligent and full of potential but he is also spoilt, selfish and capable of doing enormous damage.
Mrs. Steerforth : His widowed mother besotted with her son and incapable of believing any ill of him.
Rosa Dartle : Mrs. Steerforth's companion. Slightly older than Steerforth but under his spell. A sharp intelligence twisted by circumstances.
Littimer : Steerforth's valet.
Mr. Micawber : One of Dickens's comic masterpieces. Hopelessly impecunious, eternally optimistic, passing in a moment from deepest despair to the highest of spirits and given to flights of oratory on every occasion.
Mrs. Micawber : His long-suffering wife who believes in him through thick and thin.
Creakle : Typical “spare the rod and spoil the child” Dickensian schoolmaster.
Mr. Mell : A mild mannered teacher.
Dr. Chillip : A timid country doctor.
Dora : David's first wife. Very young and doll-like. She does not appear in the text as it stands but I am going to look at ways of bringing her in. I will provide some material from another adaptation for reading at the audition.