Never the Train: That Poor Dream Goes Off the Rails

Metro-North’s commuter line from Grand Central to New Haven passes through some of the wealthiest suburbs and poorest cities in America. That Poor Dream, a “reimagining” of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations by the Assembly Theater Project, takes place aboard an old-fashioned railroad car making this journey. Pip — Dickens’s rags-to-riches protagonist — now goes to Columbia and lives in an Upper West Side penthouse. He learns the truth about his anonymous benefactor en route to the leafy suburban dwelling of his hard-hearted love, Estella. (Actors’ roles are not specified in the program.) Video shows the locomotive’s progress, with towns and stations passing by.