Jane Austen’s novels are known for their wry wit and nuanced observation of gender and class among the landed English gentry in the late eighteenth century. Kate Hamill’s stage adaptation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is more like… a cartoon? A panto? A very long skit?
The result, despite some strong work from the actors in this production, is boring.
The outlines of the story stay basically the same, of course. Elizabeth Bennett is one of four unmarried daughters in a financially vulnerable family. As their mother is only too aware, their collective fortunes depend on “good” (i.e. financially remunerative) marriages for her girls. But Lizzy bridles at being treated like chattel and swears she’ll never marry — until she starts to spar with Darcy, an enormously wealthy landowner who, like Lizzy, resists the social conventions of their set.
Lizzy is also tempted by a handsome army officer named Wickham, whom her fourteen-year-old sister Lydia drags home. (Lydia is intent on winning “the marriage game.”)
Jane, considered the most eligible of the bunch, is head-over-heels for Bingley, but marital prospects for all the daughters are reduced by the perception that their family isn’t sufficiently wealthy.
In Hamill’s retelling, the fourth sister, Mary, is a coarse joke of unmarriageability. Played in drag by Rem Murray — because what’s funnier than a man in woman’s clothing? — she’s too big, too sickly, too creepy. There’s no compassion here, no feeling for Mary, and it feels mean.
Austen exposes the absurdity of gender norms; Hamill makes the characters ridiculous, and that’s a big difference.
Austen is a bemused — and frustrated — observer; Hamill has built a vehicle for slapstick. In the play, instead of the subtleties of social interaction, we get double entendres, spanking, and an old woman stroking her cane like she’s jerking somebody off.
Because Hamill has sacrificed emotional exploration for broad comic effect, it’s almost impossible, as an audience member, to invest in the characters or their world, so a great deal of the story’s resonance is lost. Because fourteen-year-old Lydia becomes a Betty Boop cartoon of foolishness, for example, the tragedy of her fate when she gets caught in the machinery of the marriage market, is considerably blunted.
The adaptation is dumb.
But, as I said, many of the actors in this production fill its skewed sensibility skilfully.
Playing the marriage-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, the young women’s mother, Anita Wittenberg delivers a master class in performing this kind of work. She throws herself into it: histrionic, wheedling, growling, using her full vocal range, and delivering her lines with expert and surprising comic timing, Wittenberg negotiates her character’s whiplash emotional turns with the confidence of an expert surfer.
I was also impressed by Dylan Floyde, who brings similar confidence and clarity as he differentiates his three characters, the dashing Wickham, the skin-crawlingly odd suitor Collins, and the frigidly snobbish Miss Bingley.
Greg Armstrong-Morris’s portraits of both the overwhelmed patriarch Mr. Bennet and Lizzy’s friend Charlotte also fire particularly well. For the most part, Charlotte is not written as a joke and Armstrong-Morris gently reveals her heart.
Kate Besworth, who’s playing Lizzy, has the most complex assignment and she aces it. At the centre of the play, it’s Lizzy who must fully inhabit the script’s broad comic sensibilities and convince us of its emotional underpinnings. Besworth does both, especially in the second act when the play, blessedly, settles down.
For the general level of stylistic consistency in this production, we must thank director Scott Bellis.
This show is also reasonably handsome to look at, thanks to set and lighting designer Sophie Tang, who uses different configurations of the enormous curtains that form her backdrop to create different settings.
Would I want to sit through this production again? Nope. Does it contain admirable strengths? Yes.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Adapted from Jane Austen’s novel by Kate Hamill. Directed by Scott Bellis. A Gateway Theatre production in association with Western Canada Theatre. At the Gateway Theatre until April 26. (tickets and information)
PHOTO CREDIT: Melissa Oei as Lydia, Mererwyn Comeau (Jane), and Kate Besworth (Lizzy). Photo by David Cooper.
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