Dermot Hoare gives a solid 4 stars for an enjoyable stage adaptation of Jane Austen's most famous novel
I must confess I came away a little disappointed having just seen the Regent’s Park Theatre Ltd production of Pride and Prejudice. Not, I hasten to say, with the acting, which was highly professional and, on that note, a special word of congratulation to Jessica D’Arcy who stepped into Elizabeth Bennet’s shoes at the last moment and gave us such a seamless performance, nor the staging. The revolving framework enabling the set to change from the Bennet’s sitting room to Mr Bingley’s ballroom and every other location the play demands in between.
My disappointment stems from what was left out rather than what was put in. For example, I sensed only a passing reference to Mr Darcy’s initial disdain of the Bennet family as being socially beneath him. A fact on which, I submit, the story stands and little was made of his breaking up of the romance between Jane and Mr Bingley. Crucial to the eventual attraction between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth was his journey to Brighton to raise Lydia from the status of a fallen woman to that of Mr Wickham’s wife – yet we only learn of that in retrospect.
Perhaps I am being a little churlish since, with a running time already of two and a half hours, had I been satisfied we might have been there for the night. So, the director, Deborah Bruce, was wise to concentrate on the central theme of the search for a spouse. After all Jane Austin’s comedy, and I use comedy in the theatrical sense of having a happy ending rather than the Morecombe and Wise sense, although Steven Meo as Mr Collins would have fitted easily into either scenario, is a comedy of attitudes midst the social pressure on young women.
Given that task, Felicity Montagu is excellent as Mrs Bennet and her overly-enthusiastic marrying off of her daughters hides the very real desperation borne of that suffocating pressure. At a time when only the eldest son can inherit, her daughters need to find husbands if they are to avoid a life dependent on other people’s charity and one must remember that when Jane Austin was writing, young women vastly outnumbered young men of substance.
The alternative, as portrayed by the Bennet’s friend Charlotte, was a marriage of convenience. Meanwhile, Mr Bennet, played by Matthew Kelly, seems to have given up the task of coping with a houseful of women – and who can blame him!
Make no mistake, this is an enjoyable evening as witnessed by a full house of predominately women. I do wonder though how many of them were secretly hoping Colin Firth would suddenly emerge dripping from a lake.
Pride and Prejudice will be at Richmond Theatre November 15-19 for tickets visit atgtickets.com
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