Ami Tredrea and Bella Mclean. Image by Marc Brenner.

London Tide by Ben Power, music by PJ Harvey – National Theatre: Lyttleton, London

Ian Rickson’s production of London Tide is both a delight to watch, and a significant achievement. The challenge of adapting Charles Dickens’ weird, labyrinthine novel for the stage is enough in itself, but turning it into a musical to boot, seems like a risky venture. Fortunately, the adaptation is by Ben Power and the music by PJ Harvey, an inspired pairing. Together, they have conjured up coherent, direct and involving theatre, judiciously updated, with songs that are on a whole different level of quality to standard music theatre fare.

Rickson’s staging, with sets by Bunny Christie, is sparse but effective and original. A void at the front of the stage is the Thames, which shapes the lives of Dickens’ characters. The entire cast climbs out of it at curtain up, and characters are cast in, pulled out sometimes dead, sometimes alive. The stage is a huge dark space edged with giant river piles, with a watery, translucent sheet at the rear used for some impressive silhouette scenes. What makes this something different is the way that the stage floor moves, rising and tilting like the river, and so does the lighting rig, which hangs low enough for it to lift one character into the air, has he grabs it with both hands. The gantries move rhythmically up and down, like in ripples like water, the first time I have ever seen a theatre’s fittings used almost as an extra character.

The story, stripped back expertly by Power, who also gives the gender roles a carefully judged 21st century boost, is pure London noir. Dicken’s novel is pretty absurd but its strength, and that of the stage show, is the filthy London atmosphere – a city of mud and shadows, poverty and fate, to which its inhabitants are, nevertheless, fiercely devoted. PJ Harvey’s songs, backed by a three-piece band on stage, underscore the noir themes rather than reiterating the story. With lyrics by Power, they are properly impressive, written in styles that range across Harvey’s fine career. At times songs sound like ‘Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea’, at others like ‘White Chalk’, or ‘Let England Shake’. When the cast lines up at the front of the stage, singing directly to the audience “This is a story about London and death and resurrection”, it sounds like a number from ‘The Threepenny Opera’.

London Tide is worth it for the music alone, but there’s a lot more. Dickens’ characters offer some excellent roles, which are grabbed with both hands by a young cast. Bella Mclean as the entitled Bella Wilfer, makes a convincing transition to self-awareness, and has a particularly excellent voice. Ami Tredea’s Limehouse girl, Lizzie Hexam, is full of character and determination. Jake Wood, as Gaffer Hexam who fishes bodies from the Thames for a living, has real menace. Ellie-May Sheridan makes a great deal of the small part of doll’s dressmaker, Jenny Wren. Tom Mothersdale is suitable distracted as heir-in-disguise, John Rokesmith. Peter Wight, always hard to beat in any role, makes Noddy Boffin clumsy and likeable. As principle baddie Bradley Headstone, Scott Karim is lugubrious and frightening. And Crystal Condie, as Miss Potterson, plays an important role as a landlady standing up the depredations of the men who strew damaged people in their wake.

London Tide is a seriously high quality evening. Ben Power, PJ Harvey and Ian Rickson make the show seem simple, and logical, but it really is nothing of the kind. Epic Dickens adaptations like the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby were once era defining. Now they sneak into the National Theatre’s repertoire, and it is a credit to the current management that shows of this quality can, to some extent, be taken for granted.