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•  Dickens wrote this novel while going through his own hard times (an unhappy marriage complicated by an affair with his sister-in-law) in order to rescue the weekly magazine Household Words from diminishing readership. The weekly installments quickly turned the magazine's sales around--circulation doubled 10 weeks after the irst installment appeared (April 1, 1954) and almost five-fold by the time the last installment came out in August.
  
  
• Hard Times, along with Little Dorritt, Our Mutual Friend and Domby and Son belongs to what some critics have labeled as his "Dark Period." Though life in England was actually brighter during the 1850s and 1860s than earlier, Dickens preferred to write novels from the angry outsider's perspective. This bleakness and anger precluded his ending these tales on a note of optimism and angered some of his fans who felt that his attacks on institutions were unfair and, in view of the brighter times, tiresome. On the other hand, the hard-hitting social criticism Hard Times endeared it to George Bernard Shaw and John Ruskin.
  
  
•  The circus (which is not given much pictorial representation in the Pearl Theatre production) gave Hard Times the facade of a fable, (like Christmas Carol), but at its core it is a realistic novel--as the Pearl production is a realistic drama in spite of its innovative quick-changing multiple role casting.
  
  
• Many modern authors who, technology notwithstanding, must still endure the time-consuming steps from manuscript to printed page may envy the fact that Dickens saw his work in print as fast as the ink dried on his manuscript. However, writing a novel for weekly serialization entailed its own considerable frustrations. Instead of writing with all the background material in place, Dickens had to simultaneously write and research details about labor disputes, the vernacular of circus entertainers and the methods of education. This coupled with other commitments and the magazine's space constraints, contributed towards making Hard Times a third shorter than Dickens' previous novels. In the final analysis this turned out to be a virtue. The novel is taut and does not wander into some of Dickens' often interminable, over-peopled peripheral plots.
  
  
• The more compressed writing also makes one understand why of all the Dickens' novels, this one was best suited to the even greater compression and streamlining in the stage adaptation that launches the 1997-98 Pearl season. By tightening the novel into a drama in which four actors serve as narrators introducing the characters they play Stephen Jeffreys has, at least for me, put his finger on the character who unifies not only the plot developments but the author's theme. That character, Gradgrind, drives everything and everyone. His philosophy of mindless, nothing-but-the-facts utilitarianism, even though espoused with well-meaning intent, nevertheless devastates his own life and the lives of those around him. As Dickens so aptly put it--
  
  

   In gauging fathomless depths with his mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with rusty, stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.

• Like the well-meaning Abbe in Douglas Wright's (Quills,) Gradgrind ends up doing more harm than the less benign Bounderby. Of course, the problem with a spare and imaginative adaptation like this is that it requires a uniformly superb and convincing cast (which was the case in the version of Quills I was recently privileged to see, but which, with the notable exception of Richard Thompson, sometimes falls short of the mark in the Pearl production).

 Here's what artistic director Shepard Sobel tells subscribers to look for in a Pearl production:

. . .a single, expressive, perfectly executed visual element that suggests a world without reconstructing each of its walls. Look for clean lines and simple statements in the costumes that offer the actors a definitive flair, but do not overwhelm the audience with extravagance.

The spareness of the Jeffrey adaptation seems written to fit Sobel's vision. It retains much of the narrative but puts them into the mouths of the actors who will dramatize it; it suggests the furnishings without detailing them. It's a very dynamic concept that seems best suited to a small venue like the St. Marks which allows the actors to move into the orchestra to give a clearer sense of the many parts they play. And it does work well and makes for one of the company's more compelling productions, in spite of its flaws which lie largely in the casting of actors who don't always inhabit their multiple roles without a great stretch of the audience members' imaginations.

What distinguishes the Pearl from other small, independent theater organizations?

It shares all those companies' constant battle of the budget--especially so when the mission is to do classical plays within a repertory setup. Theater goers and journalists seem fascinated by these huffing and puffing little engines fueled by the dedication from a small band of artists and supporters. The older Jean Cocteau Repertory (also in the East Village neighborhood as the Pearl, the hip young companies like the New Group and the Drama Dept. all provide fodder for the theater journalists' quills.

 Only the Pearl, however, has its own authorized biography in the form of a journal published by Knopf in 1991 and entitled Year Of the Pearl. The biographer, David Hapgood, whose love of the theater dates back to when he was a young child and his mother was Stanislavski's translator. His year of hanging around the Pearl in its old Chelsea location and interviewing everyone associated with the company, turned out to be a defining season. Many of the people mentioned are no longer with the company in its larger space on St. Marks Place.

The Hapgood book is a bit too much through a fan's lens and somewhat dated in terms of its location and operational principles. While it ends before the Pearl's move and general evolution--including a very attractive Web site (see link below), Year of the Pearl is nevertheless an interesting and well-observed account of the passions and problems that go into the building of an against-all-odds sort of theatrical enterprise.