T EACHER INF ORM AT ION PACKET
2019-20 SEASON
TE A C H E R INF ORM AT ION PACKET Compiled and Written by:
Madelyn Ardito Director of Education
Jacqueline Brown Education Program Coordinator
EDUCATION
LAYOUT by:
Claire Zoghb GRAPHICS DIRECTOR
JACOB G. PADRรณN
19 20
ARTISTIC Director
KIT INGUI
MANAGING Director
PRESENTS
By Kate Hamill Directed by Jess McLeod Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
NOV 27 >DEC 22 2019
COLLABORATING SPONSORS
#PrideAndPrejudiceLWT
LONG WHARF THEATRE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE GENEROSITY OF OUR EDUCATION SUPPORTERS
ANNA FITCH ARDENGHI TRUST FREDERicK A. D e LUCA FOUNDATION THE ETHEL & ABE LAPIDES FOUNDATION, INC. Seymour L. Lustman Memorial Fund henry nias foundation, inc. THEATRE FORWARD WELLS FARGO FOUNDATION yale repertory theatre
During our 19-20 season, we are asking our artists to share with you some thoughts about how they hope you will show up and engage with their work. This invitation, for On the Grounds of Belonging, comes to you from the playwright, Ricardo Pérez González.
an invitation to... Be joyous. Be vocal. Gasps, laughter, the occasional audible “yaaas,” “wepa,” “preach,” or your one-word cultural equivalent are all appropriate. Theatre isn’t a spectator sport. You’re part of the story. Listen. Lean in. Give of yourself. Be inspired by the enthusiasm of your fellow audience members. Let it draw you deeper into the play, rather than pull you out. Join your fellow audience members on the ride. Breathe together. Laugh together. Cry together. Before the show, ask someone you don’t know how their journey to the theater was. After the show, ask someone you don’t know what they thought of the play.
You’re here to connect. To the play. To each other. Put away your phones and
ENGAGE.
contents A B O U T T H E P L AY
8 Setting
10 Characters
12 About the Playwright T H E W O R L D O F T H E P L AY
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Jane Austen: Biography
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Jane Austen’s Enduring Popularity
19 Historical Context of Pride and Prejudice
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Excerpt from Pride and Prejudice
S U P P L E M E N TA L M AT E R I A L S
24 READ a review – then WRITE your own!
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Look for this symbol to find discussion and writing prompts, discussion questions and classroom activities!
Works Cited
about the play “...rowdy, exuberant... thoroughly modern yet not at all contemporized. Kate Hamill’s felicitous adaptation gives us ageless emotions, couched in the mores and locutions of the past, yet timeless in their arduously suppressed intensity.” –Time Out NY
SETTING
Where does the play take place?
Where: England When: Early 1800s The Set: Props should be minimal and as flexible as possible
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Seattle Rep’s Set design of Pride and Prejudice in their 2017 production. A L AN A L A B A S TRO
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CHARACTERS
Who are the people in the play? CHARACTER BREAKDOWN: 8, with doubling (optional)
Female: JANE Late 20s/ early 30s. The eldest and most beautiful Bennet daughter. Kind, idealistic, diffident. Always tries to do the right thing. May be doubled with MISS DE BOURGH. LIZZY A year or two younger than Jane. Clever, spirited; can be sharp-tongued. Gets flustered, which makes her klutzy. Prides herself on good judgment. Not especially beautiful. LYDIA 14. The youngest Bennet. Lively, prone to imitating others’ behavior and eavesdropping. May be doubled with Lady C. CHARLOTTE LUCAS Same age as Lizzy. A practical girl with a good sense of humor. May be doubled with Mr. Bennet. LADY CATHERINE Patrician Caesar-meets-drill sergeant. May double with Lydia. MISS DE BOURGH Lady Catherine’s daughter; a gremlin. May double with Jane.
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Male:
Male or Female, depending on doubling and actor:
MR. DARCY Late 30s-40s. One of the richest men in England. Too proper for his own good; awkward in most social contexts. Prides himself on self-control and good judgment. MR. BINGLEY Late 30s-40s. Loves the world and the world loves him. Mr. Darcy’s particular friend. Almost literally a dog. May double with Mary. MR. COLLINS A pedantic, obtuse man. Rector to Lady Catherine. May double with Wickham/ Miss Bingley. WICKHAM An unfairly handsome and charming gentleman. Raised with Darcy. May double with Collins / Miss Bingley.
MRS. BENNET The matriarch of the Bennet family. Mostly a silly woman, of mean understanding and variable temper. Hypochrondriac. The business of her life is to get her daughters married. MR. BENNET The patriarch of the Bennet family. Finds amusement in absurdity; often looks for respectable escape from the chaos of his family life. Disappointed in marriage. May double with Charlotte. MARY The third Bennet girl. Bit of a monster; prone to pendanticism and sulking. May double with Bingley. A dark goth Bronte character trapped in an Austen world. MISS BINGLEY A very rich young woman. Fancies herself witty. May be doubled with Wickham/ Collins.
Production Photo by Joey Moro
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ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: KATE HAMILL Outdoor Stages: A Madcap ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in the Hudson Valley By Mary Jo Murphy June 29, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/theater/a-madcappride-prejudice-alfresco-in-the-hudson-valley.html?smid=twnytimesarts&smtyp=cur&_r=0
Lizzy Bennet lives with Mr. Darcy in Queens. This summer, however, the prickliest pair in fiction can be found most nights in their own D.I.Y. Pemberley, a tent in Garrison, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson River — and reminding audiences that the finest china in their beloved Jane Austen is as likely to be a chamber pot as a teacup. Lizzy is Kate Hamill. Her stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” had its premiere last Saturday at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival there, where it will play in repertory until September before shifting to Primary Stages Off Broadway in November. And yes, Ms. Hamill acts opposite her nonfictional boyfriend, Jason O’Connell. It’s a first for the couple, although he played the future brotherin-law, Edward, to her Marianne Dashwood in Ms. Hamill’s previous Austen adaptation, “Sense and Sensibility,” a rollicking muslinson-wheels affair (by the appropriately named theater company Bedlam) that had an acclaimed run Off Broadway last year. Ms. Hamill, 33, says she plans to adapt all six Austen novels for the stage — probably in the order of their writing, the better to chart her own progress against Austen’s. “Northanger Abbey” may be next. (“There’s something I love about teenage vernacular,” she said in an interview last week.) Starting with “Sense and Sensibility” was perhaps wise: She could gauge the appetite for yet another Austen adaptation before adapting the most adapted — and cherished — of them all, “Pride and Prejudice.” “It’s the one everyone knows,” she said. “People have a serious attachment to it.” 12
(Courtesy T. Charles Erickson)
“Sense” was such a hit that even a committed Janeite’s attachment might well withstand an irreverent “Pride.” Kate Hamill’s unconventional production of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” includes theatrical acting, men playing women and disco music — all while staying true to Austen’s original themes. And it is irreverent. Think men cast as Mary, the plain and prudish Bennet sister, and as the snobbish Miss Bingley. A lot of “intentional water spillage.” Mr. Bingley as near to being a puppy as a man can be without being on all fours. “People might feel I have desecrated their idols, but, you know, at least I’ve tried to do something interesting,” she said, noting that she had not put zombies in it, and that “I haven’t set it on Mars.” She has discovered, however, that “Janeites” — and she counts herself as one — “are pretty open-minded people; they’re exceptionally generous. Because sometimes I’m taking liberties.” Ms. Hamill doesn’t see the purpose in adapting a classic unless there is a clear point of view. She found hers for “Pride and Prejudice” in the exaggerated notion of courtship and marriage as a game with winners, losers, referees and exceptionally bad coaches. She applied her own “historical ambivalence about marriage” just as she was arriving at the age when her friends were pairing off around her. She concluded that matches happen between people “whose weirdnesses fit together.”
She looked to the Shakespeare canon for a model. “It’s a romantic comedy, and I was thinking, what romantic comedies do I not hate?” The answer was “Much Ado About Nothing.” “I thought the big challenge going into it was, everyone knows who gets together,” she said. “I wanted to make a certain story uncertain. How do you make a ‘Much Ado’ where you’re really not sure if Benedick and Beatrice get together?”
The clanging insistence of bells became a critical device to Hamill’s retelling of this classic story about the game of games: the marriage game.
She was not afraid to go broad and go silly. There are games galore in her production. (In researching games of the period, she said, she discovered one in which participants simply slap one another in the face. It’s not in her production.) Bells ring throughout her play: wedding bells; alarm bells; the kind of bells that signal rounds in a prizefight; a chime that sounds, if only in your head, when you connect with your imperfect perfect match. (“It kind of annoys me when both Lizzy and Darcy are supermodels,” she said.)
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KATE HAMILL continued
her time reading (“My parents didn’t believe in TV”), and she joined the theater program in her very small high school. That’s where she gained some sage advice. She was studying to be an actress, but the drama teacher told the girls that if they wanted work, they had to create it. When she moved to New York, one of her jobs involved writing copy for catalogs. Hundreds of descriptions of jewelry. “You start to just amuse yourself: What else can I say about this pendant?” Early on, she said, “in my mind a serious writer was someone different from me,” and she remained committed to acting. But she wearied of auditions for “silent suffering girlfriend” and “girl in bikini.” That’s when she recalled her old instructor’s counsel. Three-quarters of all plays are written by men, and an overwhelming majority of parts are for men, she said, reeling off statistics she seemed to have learned the hard way. She began to think about creating “new classics.”
The clanging insistence of bells became a critical device to her retelling of this classic story about the game of games: the marriage game. Ms. Hamill grew up in a farmhouse in rural Lansing, N.Y., the fifth of six siblings. She knows how to milk a cow and collect eggs from hens, but she spent much of
In addition to the two Austen novels, she has adapted Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair,” and is at work on Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and — why not? — “The Odyssey,” for which she wrote a scene, she said, featuring a Cyclops singing to his sheep. In the meantime, she is vastly amused to be doing a show with Mr. O’Connell in which they get to “bicker and hate each other for hours” — and nightly he must recite a proposal that was written by her.
In the Classroom DISCUSSION: Kate Hamill has found a unique and fun way to adapt a serious classic novel into a not-so-serious play. Think about your favorite book, novel, or story, how would you adapt it into a play? Tragedy to comedy or comedy to tragedy? GOING FURTHER: Kate’s drama teacher told the girls that if they wanted work, they had to create it. What work do you feel needs to be created for you? How do you plan on creating it?
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the world of the play “...an unconditional delight... invigorating... a bouncy, jaunty take on Austen... remains remarkably true to the values and priorities of its source. The classic Austen preoccupations with real estate, income, class, reputation and equilibrium in life are all rendered brightly and legibly here.” –NY Times 15
JANE AUSTEN: BIOGRAPHY https://www.chipublib.org/jane-austen-biography/
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t is said that Jane Austen lived a quiet life. Only a few of her manuscripts remain in existence and the majority of her correspondence was either burned or heavily edited by her sister, Cassandra, shortly before she died. As a result, the details that are known about her are rare and inconsistent. What can be surmised through remaining letters and personal acquaintances is that she was a woman of stature, humor and keen intelligence. Family remembrances of Austen portray her in a kind, almost saintly light, but critics who have studied her books and the remnants of her letters believe she was sharper than her family wished the public to think.
A Portrait of Jane Austen courtesy of University of Texas, 1873
Family Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire on December 16, 1775 and grew up in a tight-knit family. She was the seventh of eight children, with six brothers and one sister. Her parents, George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, were married in 1764. Her father was an orphan but with the help of a rich uncle he attended school and was ordained by the Church of England. Subsequently, he was elevated enough in social standing to provide Cassandra a worthy match whose family was of a considerably higher social status. In 1765, they moved to Steventon, a village in north Hampshire, about 60 miles southwest of London, where her father was appointed rector. Of all her brothers, Austen was closest to Henry; he served as her agent, and then after her death, as her biographer. Cassandra, Austen’s only sister, was born in 1773. Austen and Cassandra were close friends and companions throughout their entire lives. It is through the remaining letters to Cassandra that biographers are able to piece Austen’s life together. When Austen was 9 they attended the Abbey School in Reading. Shortly after enrolling however, the girls were withdrawn, because their father could no longer afford tuition. Though this completed their formal schooling, the girls continued their education at home, with the help of their brothers and father. The Austens often read aloud to one another. This evolved into short theatrical performances that Austen 16
had a hand in composing. The Austen family plays were performed in their barn and were attended by family members and a few close neighbors. By the age of 12, Austen was writing for herself as well as for her family. She wrote poems and several parodies of the dramatic fiction that was popular at the time, such as History of England and Love and Freindship[sic]. She then compiled and titled them: Volume the First, Volume the Second and Volume the Third.
Literary Works In 1795, when she was 20, Austen entered a productive phase and created what was later referred to as her “First Trilogy.” Prompted by increasing social engagements and flirtations, she began writing Elinor and Marianne, a novel in letters, which would eventually be reworked and retitled Sense and Sensibility. The following year, she wrote First Impressions, which was rejected by a publisher in 1797. It was the first version of Pride and Prejudice. She began another novel in 1798, titled Susan, which evolved into Northanger Abbey.
She started but did not finish The Watsons and had a hard time adjusting to social demands. She could not understand the emphasis society placed on marriage. It was hard for her to wrap her mind around marriage as anything other than a union based on mutual respect and love. The rules and customs imposed on courtship were abhorrent to her. She accepted a marriage proposal from Harris BiggWither, the son of an old family friend, but changed her mind the next day. A few years later, in 1805, her father died, leaving Jane, Cassandra and their mother without enough money to live comfortably. As a result, the Austen women relied on the hospitality of friends and family until they were permanently relocated to a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, belonging to her brother Edward Austen-Knight. There, Austen began the most productive period of her life, publishing several books and completing her “Second Trilogy.”
Sketch of Jane Austen courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
TITLE
YEAR PUBLISHED
Sense and Sensibility
1811
Pride and Prejudice
1813
Mansfield Park
1814
Emma
1815
Austen finished the final drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice in 1811. They were published shortly after and she immediately set to work on Mansfield Park. In 1814, Mansfield Park was published and Emma was started. By this time, Austen was gaining some recognition for her writing, despite the fact that neither Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice were published under the pseudonym “A Lady.” Austen began showing symptoms of illness while she worked on Persuasion, her last completed novel. It was published with Northanger Abbey after her death. Unknown at the time, Austen most likely suffered from Addison’s disease, whose symptoms include fever, back pain, nausea and irregular skin pigmentation. On her deathbed, when asked by her sister Cassandra if there was anything she required, she requested only “death itself.” She died at the age of 41 on July 18, 1817 with her sister at her side. Austen’s fame and popularity began to grow after her death once her brother Henry decided to reveal Austen as the true author of the works previously known to have been written by “A Lady.”
In the Classroom DISCUSSION: Think about your favorite story, can you trace its history back to the first telling? Who originally created it? How has it changed over the years? GOING FURTHER: Many musicians remake old tunes and reintroduce them to society years later. Can you think of a new song that has roots in the past?
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JANE AUSTEN’S ENDURING POPULARITY
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hen asked why Jane Austen’s works are so popular, Richard Jenkyns, author of A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen and descendant of Austen’s older brother, said: “I guess that she is popular because she is modern… I think her popularity is in her representing a world, in its most important aspects, that we know.”
Although living in a world that seems remote in time and place, Jane Austen’s characters have experiences and emotions that are familiar to us. They misjudge people based on appearances, they’re embarrassed by their parents, they flirt and they fall in love. Her characters face social restrictions that can be translated into any environment, from a California high school in Clueless to an interracial romance in Bride and Prejudice. The critical and commercial success of the numerous recent film and television adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, including nine of Pride and Prejudice, testifies to her timeless and universal appeal. The light subject matter but serious social commentary she offered makes her work both accessible and relatable to many. In The Eye of the Story, Eudora Welty wrote that Austen’s novels withstand time because “they pertain not to the outside world but to the interior, to what goes on perpetually in the mind and heart.” Perhaps, for these reasons, Austen’s work continues to fascinate, entertain and inspire us.
ADAPTATIONS:
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Emma
Pride and Prejudice 1940 Film
Sense and Sensibility 1995 Film
Emma 1972 BBC TV Special
Pride and Prejudice 1995 Film
Sense and Sensibility 2008 Film
Clueless 1996 Film
Bridget Jones’ Diary 2001 Film
From Prada to Nada 2011 Film
Emma 1996 Film
Pride & Prejudice 2005 Film
Sense and Sensibility 2011 Film
Emma 2009 BBC TV Special
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HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE The Georgian Era Between 1797, when a young Jane Austen began work on what would become Pride and Prejudice, and 1813, when the novel was published, the French Revolution was fought, Marie Antoinette was guillotined and Napoleon rose to power and conquered most of Western Europe. Closer to Austen’s home, Great Britain combined with Ireland to become the United Kingdom, the slave trade was abolished by Parliament throughout the British empire and King George III, driven to apparent madness by what historians now suspect to have been a rare hereditary metabolic disorder, was replaced in his duties by his son, the Prince Regent, later to become King George IV. The Georgian era into which Jane Austen was born, characterized for Britain by almost constant warfare abroad, was in many ways a transitional period. It saw the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the shift from Enlightenment to Romantic trends in arts and letters, and the first whispers of feminist and abolitionist concerns in Western Europe. A little familiarity with these sweeping historical trends can lend some context to Austen’s domestic fictions, but perhaps more helpful is an understanding of the particular details of daily life during the Regency period; life as faced by Austen and so many of her fictional characters.
10,000 a Year From the 16th well into the 19th century, respectable wealth in England was accumulated primarily through the ownership of land. The land would be leased to tenants for farming, and the landowning families would live entirely off of the income generated by these leases. The families owning the largest of these hereditary estates, which varied in size but averaged about 10,000 acres, drew incomes sufficient to construct great parks and manors, purchase fashionable goods, retain servants and livery (horses and carriages), and meet other expenses related to
keeping a country home. The most prosperous landowners also kept a town home in London, the social and political center of England, and lived there during the social season, January through July. The oldest, though not necessarily the wealthiest, of these families may have had some claim to nobility with inherited titles that gave “precedence” or a higher rank at social functions in town or country. The term “aristocracy” referred somewhat more ambiguously to any keepers of London town homes whose social and political connections bought them seats in Parliament or influence in the royal court. In Pride and Prejudice, the Bennets are, like Jane Austen herself, members of an educated upper middle class known as the “gentry” or the “landed gentry.” Considered socially eligible to mix with the landowning aristocracy, but quite a step beneath them in wealth, resources and precedence, the landed gentry included country squires, military officers and many forms of clergy; all acceptable roles for the educated younger sons of the aristocracy and their descendants. Gentry may have owned less than 1,000 acres of land, may have leased to tenants or overseen the farming directly and typically lived in the country year-round, visiting London only to take care of occasional legal matters. Beneath the gentry were the laboring classes of household servants, tenant farmers, merchants and “tradesmen,” such as smiths and carpenters, village doctors, town lawyers and other professionals. Though lower in social standing because their income bore “the taint of trade”, many merchants and tradesmen might in fact amass considerable wealth and could wind up wealthier than the poorest of the landowners. This was especially true as the Industrial Revolution progressed, pouring more and more wealth into the trade and merchant classes. For the landowners and the gentry, management of all financial matters was a gentleman’s prerogative. By law and by custom, a woman was granted very little control over money, even money that we would today
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JANE AUSTEN’S ENDURING POPULARITY continued
£4,000 a year, like Bingley’s, could well-provide for both country and town homes, with all of the modern comforts and latest fashions. Indeed, Mr. Darcy’s £10,000 a year has been calculated in recent decades to be worth between $300,000 and $800,000 in U.S. dollars; while another estimate, comparing Mr. Darcy’s income against the Regency average, gives him the real purchasing power of a modern multimillionaire.
An Accomplished Lady
S consider her own. A woman of the upper classes could expect to be granted a “fortune” from her family upon marriage or the death of her father. This lump sum of money would draw interest at a fixed 5 percent from investment in government funds, which would contribute to her husband’s income if she were married or would cover her living expenses if she remained single. A man’s income, by contrast, was always reported as a number of pounds (£) “per year,” such as Mr. Bingley’s “four or five thousand a year.” About £100 a year was the barest minimum income on which a small household could be kept, retaining only one maid—a servant being necessary to maintain any claim of respectability. On £300 a year, a small family could retain two servants and live somewhat more comfortably, but still could not afford a carriage, which could only be supported on an income of at least £700 a year. Mr. Bennet draws about £2,000 a year, which would be sufficient to keep the appearance of comfort and respectability; but he bears the financial burden of providing dowries for five daughters. However, his estate is “entailed” upon his death away from the family to be given to a distant branch of the family in lieu of a male Bennet heir. But an income of more than 20
ome aspects of Regency life that have a strong bearing on the action in Austen’s novels are not necessarily given detailed description, because Austen’s first readers would already have been intimately acquainted with the highly formalized manners of the time. The custom of paying visits and leaving calling cards, for example, could consume the greater portion of a woman’s day, and many breaches of etiquette could spring from unreturned or improperly returned calls. In addition to beauty, mastery of etiquette, a sharp mind or a pleasant disposition, a lady could show her gentility through the display of her “accomplishments.” Accomplishments were sets of skills encouraged and cultivated in young women, skills which were thought to help make a home more lively, entertaining or beautiful. Common accomplishments included drawing, needlework, playing an instrument or singing well, and mastering languages. A woman with many of these skills was thought to be “highly accomplished,” and, evidently, more marriageable. Marriage, of course, was just about the only acceptable role for any woman. Women, like Austen herself, who passed beyond their youth without marrying became spinsters. They had no formal role in society and were occasionally a burden to their families. Even worse was the fate of educated young women of good standing whose fortunes were thrown in jeopardy by the sudden loss of their family. With no fortune, these women were nearly unmarriageable and might be required to enter the servant class as a governess of wealthy children in order to provide a living for themselves.
EXCERPT FROM PRIDE AND PREJUDICE LYDIA
Why should you pretend love and marriage and all that is a joke? It seems very serious to me. They begin getting ready for the ball. Lydia and Mary’s outfits are hideous.
LIZZY That’s because you are far away from it. When you’re closer to the prospect, it becomes much too frightening, and you must laugh so you don’t cry. Playing games keeps one sane, when the stakes involved threaten to drive one MAD. JANE
Stop filling her head with foolishness. It’s not a game, Lydia.
LIZZY Isn’t it? There are rules, strategies, wins, losses - and it is, theoretically, done for pleasure. LYDIA
How do you know if you’ve found the right match?
LIZZY
Well. I shouldn’t tell you, but -
LYDIA Yes? LIZZY You know you’ve met the right one when LYDIA
(breathless with excitement) - yes?
LIZZY A lightning bolt shoots down from the sky and fries you like an egg! You probably decide he’s your Perfect Match just after your Mamma has finished counting his rich, sickly relatives and your Pappa has called on his bankers. These things are all arranged above one’s head, Lydia. JANE It’s complicated, dear. But I imagine you know when you have met the right person - well, at first, there is a liking. And then you behave appropriately, of course. But, eventually - there is a perfect understanding between souls. Wordless, and faultless. LYDIA Ooooh. LIZZY NOW who’s filling her head with nonsense? What novels have you been reading? LIZZY I know myself, Jane. I shall never marry. For (looking off towards her parents) the state is fundamentally flawed, as far as I can see. It is all just... too much. I would, however, make a lovely maiden aunt. So do hurry and make the necessary arrangements with this Mr. Bingley...! 21
EXCERPT continued
In the Classroom DISCUSSION: Based on the dialogue above, how does your view of marriage and relationships compare to Lizzy’s? Do you agree? Why/Why not? GOING FURTHER: Do you believe that marriage is a game? Is there a simple way to play? Is it possible to cheat?
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supplemental materials
“...so full of galloping comic vitality as to suggest a bunch of stupendously clever kids playing dressup in the nursery. It’s by far the smartest Jane Austen adaptation to come along since Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, and at least as much fun.” –Wall Street Journal 23
READ A REVIEW – THEN WRITE YOUR OWN! In the Classroom The following is a review from the August 2018 performance of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont. Read this review and, after seeing Long Wharf’s production, write your own!
THEATER REVIEW: DTF’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ fills the stage with delicious portraits of classic romance – novel characters By J. PETER BERGMAN August 14, 2018 https://theberkshireedge.com/theatre-review-dtfs-pride-and-prejudice-fills-the-stage-with-delicious-portraits-of-classic-romance-novel-characters/
Ashling Pembroke as Lydia, Carman Lacivita as Mary, Joan Coombs as Mrs. Bennet, Omar Robinson as Mr. Bennet, Krystel Lucas as Jane and Jessica Frey as Lizzy in the Dorset Theatre Festival production of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ Credit Joey Moro “Balls. Balls. Balls! I cannot get enough of ’em.” Who knew that Jane Austen was the Neil Simon of the early 19th century? Apparently Kate Hamill figured that out and went for the funny bone of social commentary in preparing her theatrical version of Austen’s most popular novel, “Pride and Prejudice,” now on stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont. In two 24
and a half nonstop laugh-riot hours, she has given her audience the opportunity to learn for themselves how insane a family could be even then. Like Simon, she uses the most realistic of circumstances: a mother needing to marry off multiple daughters in order to assure herself a future in a nice home. She takes the usually comic mother figure, Mrs. Bennet, and expands her style of mania to her offspring almost as a genetic inheritance. Mary, the youngest, is always a startling presence,
Ryan Quinn, Ashling Pembroke, Jessica Frey, Krystel Lucas and Carman Lacivita in the Dorset Theatre Festival production of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ Photo: Joey Moro
upsetting the others when she appears. Lydia is constantly flying into fantasies about her siblings. Lizzy is stubbornly disinterested in marriage and a future, and Jane is romantically unable to get a man to propose. Their father is usually withdrawn, absorbed with studies and news, but still loving and curiously supportive of his daughters’ independent natures. Somehow it all reminds me of every Neil Simon play I ever saw, beginning with “Come Blow Your Horn.” Family dynamics abound in this play. So do crossgender playing and multiple roles for most of the company. With the exception of the three motivating folk — Mrs. Bennet, played by Joan Coombs; Lizzy, played by Jessica Frey; and Mr. Darcy, played by Dave Quay — everyone else in the company of eight players take on multiple personalities, costumes, wigs and ways. Sometimes the changes are so drastic it is hard to comprehend who the actor is under hat, the gown, the veils; thank goodness there’s a scorecard, or program, to help keep them straight. The gender confusion adds to the fun here and director Christopher V. Edwards uses it to good effect. For example, Carman Lacivita plays the youngest, least attractive Bennet girl in a pensive, petulant, piquant manner, but is also Mr. Bingley, the handsome and aristocratic if awkward suitor of the eldest daughter, Jane. Late in the second act, he needs to be both characters in the same scene and this is handled with a physical humor that is just as funny as any single line in the show. Ryan Quinn is the loathsome cousin Mr. Collins, who stands to inherit the Bennet’s property (in England in the early 1800s, women could not inherit); and the untrustworthy Lieutenant Wickham, who courts Lydia; and Miss Bingley, who destroys Jane’s romance.
Quinn is wonderfully different role to role, smarmy to suave to bearded dragon-lady. Even the wonderfully warm Mr. Bennet of Omar Robinson undergoes a transformation to spinster neighbor Charlotte Lucas who interferes with the plans to marry off one or another daughter to Mr. Collins. Krystel Lucas plays Jane with grace and beauty and charm, particularly in her scenes with Lizzy, but transforms later into the hideously awkward Miss De Bourgh, grasping at Mr. Darcy and lunging at anyone who comes near him. Her Jane is the most sympathetic character in the play and her sorrow at not completing arrangements with Bingley before his departure to London is quite moving. Playwright Kate Hamill has made a madhouse out of the Bennets’ world and it works wonderfully, filling the stage with delicious portraits of classic romance-novel characters. The frivolous, giggly, marginally attractive Lydia is transformed into the autocratic, aristocratic, monomaniacal and handsome Lady Catherine De Bourgh by Ashling Pembroke, who was so successful at metamorphosis that I actually didn’t realize who was playing the second character. Throughout the show, these changes are so perfectly realized that the comedy is enhanced through caricature. Jessica Frey is a wonderful Lizzy Bennet. She 25
REVIEW continued
Dave Quay and Jessica Frey in the Dorset Theatre Festival production of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ Photo: Joey Moro
then charming, then despicable but she is never NOT funny and never NOT endearing. It is the knot of her relationships with her family that binds her to their interests and her selfinterests simultaneously. Coombs negotiates these comic twists with amazing grace and ease and, when she has finally settled the hash of everyone except Mary, she relaxes into a delicious demeanor that even delights her husband. I know this actress and I usually enjoy her work but, this time around, I love what she has accomplished. is staunch and serious and straightforward with every line she utters. She is judgmental and strict about it. Her opinions are hard to alter and her opinion of Mr. Darcy takes a long time to shift into romance. Frey handles that alteration with the aplomb of a fine tailor; small, invisible stitches hold the hem of her gown and the bodice of her true feelings with equal strength. When she ultimately finds herself not settling, but settling into a good romance, it is wonderful to watch her face and her body move into a new, longanticipated personality. Her Darcy is played by Dave Quay in a manner that Laurence Olivier would approve of if he could watch one of his finest film roles become the object of laughter. This is not the laughter of derision but of understanding the human foibles Darcy is experiencing. Quay is not the most romantic figure on the stage, but he is the most arresting. He has a fine voice and he moves well and, when he dances with Lizzy, you can almost feel the controlled lust welling up in him. He and Frey make a fine couple: You want them to fall in love. As Mother Bennet, Joan Coombs turns in a remarkable performance of a hateful character who is usually a comic figure among so many serious younger people. In this play, she is the comic engine that drives her four daughters (the book has five daughters, by the way) through their exasperating turns at the game of love. She is at once loving, then conniving, 26
The very unusual set design by Alexander Woodward is wonderful to watch as it takes on as many personalities as the actors. Haydee Zelideth’s costumes are pretty and functional and allow for the swift changes without even the modern footwear seeming out of place. Deb Sullivan’s lighting was most effective, especially with the set changes, and the sound design by Elisheba Ittoop worked most of the time, although, now and then, there was a lot of odd noise that made no sense. One of the most effective qualities of this production was the period dances created by Alexandra Beller. They occasionally broke from tradition to become almost balletic battles for dominance between the men and women and, given the text of Austen’s original book, this seemed remarkably appropriate. As good as Hamill’s script is, the bulk of the awarding here must go to Edwards for directing this comedy romance in such a clever, swift, well-timed fashion. High comedy is not easy and the laughter here emerges from high-comic technique. I wasn’t really sure at the outset that I was ready for a comic take on this book, but I will never stop giggling over the lines, their delivery and their effect on both audience and other characters on stage. Neil Simon would be delighted and jealous, I think, for none of his recent plays has possessed such insights into the comedy of the human race.
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WORKS CITED biography.com/people/jane-austen-9192819 stylist.co.uk/books/jane-austen-an-influential-woman jasna.org/austen/screen/pride-prejudice/ Tucker, George Holbert. Jane Austen the Woman. St. Martin’s Press, 1994 Laski, Marghanita. Jane Austen and Her World. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975 Jane Austen.” Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 3: Writers of the Romantic Period, 1789-1832. Gale Research, 1992
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