Belt Up's Twenty Minutes to Nine

Charles Dickens obviously left something out. If this play is anything to go by, Miss Havisham—that pin-up for old ladies fossilised by loss and bitterness—still had a lot to share.

The allusion to that fantastic character from Great Expectations is not overt in this studied if slightly starchy one-woman show. She is never named. But clues litter the immersive, fusty boudoir in which the audience are invited to sit.

The title relates to the time of day that Miss Havisham discovered that her love, Compeyson, betrayed her. She only wears one shoe, as she is getting dressed when she hears the news. And of course there is the lace, Victorian wedding dress that she never takes off.

Lucy Farrett ably plays the old woman with bug-eyed creepiness, resembling an Edward Gorey sketch. Her voice wails and creaks, like the mansion in which she has entombed herself.

After a brief tête a tête with the audience, she engages in a storytelling session. She leaves Dickens' tale untouched, instead sharing memories from her youth. Through her doomed back story, she explains her melancholic philosophy.

Her Victorian sensibilities and rigid class distinctions come through as she talks about visiting an insane asylum for fun, her prudishness and fascination with sex, and the "peasant wailing" that greeted the death of a child in her youth. Most telling of all is an encounter with an old lady equally mummified in her past.

Fans of Dickens will lap up Havisham's imagined life story. Those unfamiliar might have their expectations confounded.