SIMON Higlett's wooden set, sculpted like the hull of a ghostly ship, disappears into the ether of the Quarry Theatre. You cannot see the end in sight, much like the experience of watching Giles Havergal's stately, funereal adaptation of David Copperfield.

Seventy minutes for the first half, 80 for the second, alas a lifetime passes by and the deaths pile up (none through boredom, although it must be a close-run thing) as Charles Dickens's rites of passage take longer than a Sunday train service.

David Copperfield is Dickens's veiled autobiography, and it is indeed a writerly piece, all the more so in Havergal's version, first performed at the Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago, in February 2001 and now given its British premire with Havergal himself as director.

For David Copperfield's 19th century journey from innocence, through childhood privations and turbulent emotional blossoming to adult experience, Havergal mirrors the construct of the novel.

The adventures of young David Copperfield (Mark Rice-Oxley) are refracted through the quizzical gaze of his adult self (Rupert Frazer), the tour guide to his youthful travels and travails.

He is neither guardian angel (too late for that) nor detached narrator, more a one-man Greek chorus, but the device is still more literary than theatrical.

Only in moments such as Frazer holding a protective umbrella over Rice-Oxley in the rain does the partnership find a fluid choreography, but more often Frazer is as grey as his sculpted hair.

Havergal's production is episodic, progressing like a stadium-rock concert with a series of greatest hits and guitar solos in the form of big moments for Tristram Wymark's cane-wielding Mr Murdstone, Andy Hockley's colourful, avuncular Mr Micawber, Steven O'Neill's crepuscular, gothic Uriah Heep and Saskia Butler's child-wife butterfly, Dora.

On that big, big stage, the play feels disconnected, not least because the 19th century world is far removed from today's rites of passage. Education, for example, has been turned on its head to the point now where a teacher will not raise a hand to a child.

Havergal's production is as neat and proper as an old gentlemen's outfitters, but is as redundant as Rover's Birmingham workforce.

Box office: 0113 213 7700

Updated: 11:03 Thursday, May 05, 2005