Theatre review: Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Misunderstanding Jane Austen is one of the favourite pastimes of  mainstream British culture.  Fascinated by her gift for capturing the now unfamiliar detail of upper-middle-class life at the turn of the 19th century, we dwell on her talk of ribbons and bonnets, and on her characters’ fancy way of speaking, as if they were the subject of her novels.  There have been whole screen adaptations that have almost entirely ignored Austen’s fierce grasp of the economic realities of life for genteel women without property in the age when she was born, although many have chucked in some extra chest-baring and breast-heaving, in a modernising effort that is all but irrelevant to novels already so driven by sexual desire, albeit more subtly expressed.
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)

Theatre review: Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh *****


  
Now, though – trailing roars of applause from its first run at the Tron in 2018, and from its 2019 UK tour – here comes the stage version that sets all of that right.  First created as a Tron summer show by the brilliant young Glasgow group Blood Of The Young, Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of) imagines the story of Jane Austen’s most famous novel retold by six young female servants of the period, doomed to live out their lives in obscurity, but nonetheless privileged, as they tell us with relish, to “see absolutely everyone, naked”.

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There’s no disrespect shown, though, to the essential elements of the famous story, as – on a spare and superbly playable staircase set by Ana Ines Jabares Pita – director Paul Brotherston’s brilliant company start to don fragmentary costumes signalling the main characters, crank up their karaoke machine, and tell, with illustrative songs from the last half-century of love ballads, the tale of the frantic Mrs Bennett, married to a gentleman whose entire estate is to be inherited by a distant male cousin; and of her five unmarried daughters aged between 15 and 22, all of whom will become destitute on their father’s death, if Mrs Bennett cannot marry at least one of them off to a man of wealth and high social standing.


The writer of Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), Isobel McArthur, plays Mrs Bennett with a passionate, down-to-earth sense of her plight that embraces both tragedy and comedy; and also – with an unflinching, steady seriousness – a stuffy but memorably passionate and heroic Mr Darcy.  Meghan Tyler is equally brilliant as  Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennett – smart, sarcastic, and quite undaunted by the overwhelming pressure to marry any fool who can offer economic security.


Hannah Jarrett-Scott turns in a terrific range of performances, from Charlotte Lucas – Elizabeth’s close friend, passionately in love with her, but doomed to marry the wretchedly boring Mr Collins – to Mr Bingley, the young gentleman who falls in love with Elizabeth’s lovely older sister Jane (an eloquent and sweet-voiced Christina Gordon, chanting numbers like Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?); and there’s strong and often hilarious support from Tori Burgess and Felix Forde as a whole range of younger sisters, old duffers and alternative suitors.


The language of the adaptation is modern and sometimes brutal, but always in a key that captures the emotional truth of Jane Austen’s story; and it’s delivered in a fabulous range of no-nonsense servants’-hall voices from across the isles, from strong Belfast via well-off Glasgow to Yorkshire. In layer after layer of brilliance,  in other words – Isobel McArthur’s writing, Paul Brotherston’s dazzling production, and a terrific ensemble of young women performers – this mighty novel is captured as it has never been captured before; not only its fierce feminism and brilliant humour, but also – most surprisingly of all – its spirit of true romance, the thing for which all young hearts yearn, and of which they should never allow themselves to be robbed without the kind of glorious battle captured here, in all its horror, hilarity, and ultimate sweetness. Joyce McMillan

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until 15 February


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