The Assembly presents a devised work that melds American class issues with themes from Dickens’s Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations is the primary inspiration for That Poor Dream, but the play is probably best approached with more realistic hopes. Set on a train from New York to Connecticut, with multiple flashbacks to flesh out the plot, the Assembly’s collectively devised work imports Pip (Edward Bauer) to the age when a “gentleman” has an Ivy League degree, a joylessly dandyish fashion sense and perhaps a decent table at Per Se. This is a Pip of the 1 percent, peevish and ungrateful; when he meets Magwitch (Terrell Wheeler), the escaped criminal who has been his secret benefactor since he was an impoverished child, he can barely disguise his contempt. Neither, unfortunately, can the Assembly contain its distate for him. Pip’s spoiled, prickly unpleasantness may well represent a deliberate effort not to let him (and his class) off the hook, but it also keeps the audience from being hooked into his story.