*****
IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that a two-hour performance adaptation of a favourite novel will be in want of savage cuts.
Yet there are levels of delight in this production which almost charm the audience into forgiveness
So it is with Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s touring production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, currently in performance at The Lowry. Simon Reade’s 2013 adaptation keeps the essentials of the 200-year old story – boy meets girl and mutual loathing turns to requited love, much to everyone’s economic satisfaction – by accelerating and merging key romantic scenes, almost to opera-like speeds at times. Darcy proposing to Elizabeth on the way into dinner at Rosings! Just what are they going to do when she declines his ill-humoured expression of love? Starve?
Tafline Steen presents a modern Elizabeth Bennet, almost kooky at times, while Benjamin Dilloway gives us a Mr. Darcy who hasn’t been given a real chance to grow. The rush of the writing of the romantic scenes doesn’t give time for the audience to grasp the process of their revelations of love. Perhaps it doesn’t matter; there’s probably few audience members who don’t know the story. But the rush does present problems for the actors, and detracts from the essential power of the story as two young people, full of confidence in their own judgement, realise their need for a reappraisal. This needs more time.
Yet there are levels of delight in this production which almost charm the audience into forgiveness.
Mrs Bennett opens, and closes, with an unusually questioning air to one of the most famous opening lines in literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
A classy and delightful two-level revolving iron-wrought stage structure creates movement and allows a rapid flow from garden through drawing room to ballroom, enhanced by excellent dance and non-dance choreography from movement director Siân Williams, allowing director Deborah Bruce to present a world where private behaviour is on show, to family and wider society, and public perception is often deceived.
Matthew Kelly as Mr. Bennet and Felicity Montagu as Mrs Bennet get plenty of opportunity to shine in an adaptation which focuses on the positives and negatives of parental influence while maintaining the comedy inherent in the roles.
The production does save both Mr Collins, energetically played by Steven Meo, and Lady Catherine De Bourgh, a stately performance from Doña Croll, from the caricatures often deployed. Leigh Quinn performs her dual minor roles of the ‘accomplished’ Mary Bennet and the sickly Annabel De Bourgh with great comic timing and presence.
Pride and Prejudice is one of my all-time favourites and no adaptation, in my view, can come close; the loss of fine details diminishes. The famous BBC adaptation at six hours long had fewer cuts to make and so much more opportunity to satisfy Austen admirers. This adaptation, presented with charm, comedy and speed is an enjoyable evening for fans, though I’m not sure how well it serves newcomers to the story.
Pride and Prejudice plays the Lyric Theatre at The Lowry until Sat 15 Oct
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