Lancashire, the 1840s: when her father, a circus performer, mysteriously disappears, young Sissy Jupe is offered a place at Mr. Gradgrind’s school – and a job in Gradgrind’s household as a servant. Torn between two worlds, Sissy decides to leave the circus behind and start a new life.
But in Gradgrind’s school - and home - there is no place for imagination or play. Gradgrind worships only reason and logic. And Sissy and Gradgrind’s children, Louisa and Tom, are raised to distrust “fancy” and believe only in cold, hard fact . . .
When she reaches adulthood, Louisa catches the eye of bombastic mill owner and self-made man, Josiah Bounderby. Gradgrind sees many advantages to an alliance with a man of such wealth and influence. And much to Sissy’s disgust, the beautiful but passionless Louisa agrees to the match.
Tom, however, is jealous of his sister’s apparent good fortune and longs for a similar life of wealth and ease. So when a wave of unrest sweeps the town, Tom seizes an opportunity to line his pockets – and ensure that someone far less fortunate than he takes the blame . . .
A thrilling, moving and ultimately uplifting story of betrayal, sacrifice and redemption, Dickens’ great novel of the triumph of the imagination over the brutality of the new industrial age is brought vividly to life in Stephen Jeffreys’ magnificent adaptation.
“Now, what I want is, facts. Facts alone are what is wanted in life. Plant nothing else in your mind and root out everything else.”
Hard Times at the Pitlochry Theatre
Wednesday 7 September - 2:00pm
Hard Times by Charles Dickens adapted for the stage by Stephen Jeffreys
“The strength of this version . . . is its preservation of the satiric vitality of Dickens’ original, and a real feel for the superb rhetoric of his prose.” Time Out
“ . . . captures the volume of suppressed anger in the text, a passion whose delicate control makes a thriller out of mawkishness.” The Independent