Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of)
May. 29th, 2025 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeWell, said I to myself, if I can't see Kidnapped live again I can at least go and see another play by Isobel McArthur...
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), McArthur's first big success, made its debut in Glasgow in 2018 and has since enjoyed three tours and a run in the West End; the current tour is nearing its close, but judging by the trajectory so far there may well be future ones. At the end of the play there was a big sign on the stage saying 'IF YOU LIKED IT, TELL SOMEONE', and I am dutifully telling all of you; if you don't want to read the long spoilery review, please read this bit here where I tell you it's very good and you should go and see it if you get a chance. :)
It's all too easy to compare this play to Kidnapped, because the basic concept is pretty similar: a classic novel, made accessible with updated language, chaotic humour and pop music, and narrated by outsiders to the original story. In this case the framing device is that the female servants—who, by their continual, often-invisible and thankless work, enable other people to do things like have epic love stories and write classic novels—show the story to the audience by playing the characters of their masters and mistresses.
Pride and Prejudice is a rather longer novel to condense into a two-hour play, and the cast was only five people (though the programme credits eight actors; I suppose they must switch around somehow), so there was a lot of cutting and a lot of very quick costume changes. Mr and Mrs Phillips, Louisa and Mr Hurst, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Colonel and Mrs Forster, Mr Gardiner and basically everyone less important than them are cut entirely; Kitty Bennet, Sir William and Lady Lucas, Anne de Bourgh and Georgiana Darcy are mentioned but not shown; Mr Bennet is played by a disembodied newspaper in an armchair (which emits puffs of smoke after one of the servants hands it a pipe). Charlotte announcing her engagement to Mr Collins, Wickham telling Elizabeth his backstory and the news of Mr Bingley's going away all happen at the Netherfield ball, after which comes the act break, and that asymmetry means there's even more condensing in the second half. All that said, I thought the play did a brilliant job of reducing the story down to its basic essentials; yes, we lost a lot of good stuff and a lot of nuance, but actually none of the cuts really seriously bothered me. (The one thing I might say is that most of the canon commentary on class differences—as opposed to that introduced by the use of the servants—is lost, and I can see how that would have been pretty difficult to translate efficiently.) And while the tone is not that of canon, it totally works as a take on the book—like Kidnapped it comments on, develops and reinterprets the humour and spirit of the original rather than trying to turn it into something completely different, and so it feels genuinely thoughtful and respectful despite being totally anarchic. There were several moments where I thought, oh yes, you get what that bit in canon is doing and you've interpreted it perfectly for all the dramatic differences in aesthetic and tone.
The framing device and multi-casting are used to very good effect, I thought. The servants play all the other characters, but they also appear as themselves at those moments where they directly affect the plot (the play actually makes the servants more important than in the book by having one of them deliver Darcy's letter to Elizabeth—which is perhaps cheating a bit, but never mind), and also narrate in places, which worked well to summarise important bits of the book that would have been difficult or inefficient to show directly. One of my favourite sequences was at Pemberley, where Darcy's portrait—i.e., the actor playing Darcy posing dramatically while another actor in servant costume holds up a picture frame in front of her—is rapidly reassembled in different parts of the stage as if the portrait is following Elizabeth around the room, until finally Darcy appears without the frame and he's really there! (Darcy's actor was also playing Mrs Reynolds, so that was a nice bit of quick costume changing too.) In several pivotal scenes the actors not playing the characters involved in the scene are in servant costume in the background, eagerly eavesdropping. When Lady Catherine turns up at the end to insult Elizabeth out of her supposed engagement to Darcy, the stage goes dark and she appears suddenly in a flash of light, and then disappears at the end of the scene in the same way: both efficient and funny.
As for the pop songs: There are some instruments played on stage—most notably a period-appropriate piano, also briefly a guitar, whistle and xylophone—but most of the backing music is recorded. This time I listened to the convenient soundtrack playlist in advance, so I could appreciate the songs nicely! I didn't quite get all the choices, but certainly loved some of them. Mr Darcy has his canon speech about the difference between pride and vanity in response to Elizabeth singing 'You're So Vain' at him; Lady Catherine at Rosings, dressed in an elaborate red costume, invites Elizabeth to sing and provides her with a song by her other nephew, Christopher; there is of course a running joke about other characters stopping Mary from singing, but at the end, after the Jane/Bingley and Elizabeth/Darcy happy endings and a summing-up speech from the servants, Mary creeps onto the stage, cautiously turns on the boombox and then sings 'Young Hearts Run Free' as a big finale song, accompanied by the servants.
(That joke also works as a cheeky book reference, because of course Lady Catherine does have another nephew who was cut from the play; and I don't think we actually know Colonel Fitzwilliam's first name, so... new headcanon adopted???)
(Incidentally, the cast pronounced 'de Bourgh' with the GH silent, like 'de Burr'; that puzzled me because it's not how I've heard it in other adaptations, but it seems that is how Chris de Burgh pronounces his name, so there you go, it was both plausible and necessary for the joke to work! My own pedantic pronunciation opinion is that it should be George-AY-na like the Duchess of Devonshire, not Georgy-AH-na; I've never heard that in an adaptation.)
The only choice I think I actually disliked was Charlotte being in unrequited love with an oblivious Elizabeth; on the one hand I can totally see how you get there from the book, but as the sole portrayal of queerness in a story that's supposed to be all about celebrating love it frankly felt a little cruel.
...It's all too easy to compare this play to Kidnapped, and I think it keeps coming out in this review that despite how much I enjoyed it on the whole, it really did strike me how much it is exactly like an earlier work by the same creator, very similar in some ways but less polished and just not quite so good. Perhaps I'm being unfair: I love Pride and Prejudice as a story but I don't love it like I love Kidnapped, and I certainly wasn't able to do the play Kidnapped justice in my opinion of it until I'd watched it multiple times. Well, if this play does keep touring in future I'll try to go and see it again, and then maybe I'll like it even better.
But oh, my darling fave, that all this success had been yours too... </3
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), McArthur's first big success, made its debut in Glasgow in 2018 and has since enjoyed three tours and a run in the West End; the current tour is nearing its close, but judging by the trajectory so far there may well be future ones. At the end of the play there was a big sign on the stage saying 'IF YOU LIKED IT, TELL SOMEONE', and I am dutifully telling all of you; if you don't want to read the long spoilery review, please read this bit here where I tell you it's very good and you should go and see it if you get a chance. :)
It's all too easy to compare this play to Kidnapped, because the basic concept is pretty similar: a classic novel, made accessible with updated language, chaotic humour and pop music, and narrated by outsiders to the original story. In this case the framing device is that the female servants—who, by their continual, often-invisible and thankless work, enable other people to do things like have epic love stories and write classic novels—show the story to the audience by playing the characters of their masters and mistresses.
Pride and Prejudice is a rather longer novel to condense into a two-hour play, and the cast was only five people (though the programme credits eight actors; I suppose they must switch around somehow), so there was a lot of cutting and a lot of very quick costume changes. Mr and Mrs Phillips, Louisa and Mr Hurst, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Colonel and Mrs Forster, Mr Gardiner and basically everyone less important than them are cut entirely; Kitty Bennet, Sir William and Lady Lucas, Anne de Bourgh and Georgiana Darcy are mentioned but not shown; Mr Bennet is played by a disembodied newspaper in an armchair (which emits puffs of smoke after one of the servants hands it a pipe). Charlotte announcing her engagement to Mr Collins, Wickham telling Elizabeth his backstory and the news of Mr Bingley's going away all happen at the Netherfield ball, after which comes the act break, and that asymmetry means there's even more condensing in the second half. All that said, I thought the play did a brilliant job of reducing the story down to its basic essentials; yes, we lost a lot of good stuff and a lot of nuance, but actually none of the cuts really seriously bothered me. (The one thing I might say is that most of the canon commentary on class differences—as opposed to that introduced by the use of the servants—is lost, and I can see how that would have been pretty difficult to translate efficiently.) And while the tone is not that of canon, it totally works as a take on the book—like Kidnapped it comments on, develops and reinterprets the humour and spirit of the original rather than trying to turn it into something completely different, and so it feels genuinely thoughtful and respectful despite being totally anarchic. There were several moments where I thought, oh yes, you get what that bit in canon is doing and you've interpreted it perfectly for all the dramatic differences in aesthetic and tone.
The framing device and multi-casting are used to very good effect, I thought. The servants play all the other characters, but they also appear as themselves at those moments where they directly affect the plot (the play actually makes the servants more important than in the book by having one of them deliver Darcy's letter to Elizabeth—which is perhaps cheating a bit, but never mind), and also narrate in places, which worked well to summarise important bits of the book that would have been difficult or inefficient to show directly. One of my favourite sequences was at Pemberley, where Darcy's portrait—i.e., the actor playing Darcy posing dramatically while another actor in servant costume holds up a picture frame in front of her—is rapidly reassembled in different parts of the stage as if the portrait is following Elizabeth around the room, until finally Darcy appears without the frame and he's really there! (Darcy's actor was also playing Mrs Reynolds, so that was a nice bit of quick costume changing too.) In several pivotal scenes the actors not playing the characters involved in the scene are in servant costume in the background, eagerly eavesdropping. When Lady Catherine turns up at the end to insult Elizabeth out of her supposed engagement to Darcy, the stage goes dark and she appears suddenly in a flash of light, and then disappears at the end of the scene in the same way: both efficient and funny.
As for the pop songs: There are some instruments played on stage—most notably a period-appropriate piano, also briefly a guitar, whistle and xylophone—but most of the backing music is recorded. This time I listened to the convenient soundtrack playlist in advance, so I could appreciate the songs nicely! I didn't quite get all the choices, but certainly loved some of them. Mr Darcy has his canon speech about the difference between pride and vanity in response to Elizabeth singing 'You're So Vain' at him; Lady Catherine at Rosings, dressed in an elaborate red costume, invites Elizabeth to sing and provides her with a song by her other nephew, Christopher; there is of course a running joke about other characters stopping Mary from singing, but at the end, after the Jane/Bingley and Elizabeth/Darcy happy endings and a summing-up speech from the servants, Mary creeps onto the stage, cautiously turns on the boombox and then sings 'Young Hearts Run Free' as a big finale song, accompanied by the servants.
(That joke also works as a cheeky book reference, because of course Lady Catherine does have another nephew who was cut from the play; and I don't think we actually know Colonel Fitzwilliam's first name, so... new headcanon adopted???)
(Incidentally, the cast pronounced 'de Bourgh' with the GH silent, like 'de Burr'; that puzzled me because it's not how I've heard it in other adaptations, but it seems that is how Chris de Burgh pronounces his name, so there you go, it was both plausible and necessary for the joke to work! My own pedantic pronunciation opinion is that it should be George-AY-na like the Duchess of Devonshire, not Georgy-AH-na; I've never heard that in an adaptation.)
The only choice I think I actually disliked was Charlotte being in unrequited love with an oblivious Elizabeth; on the one hand I can totally see how you get there from the book, but as the sole portrayal of queerness in a story that's supposed to be all about celebrating love it frankly felt a little cruel.
...It's all too easy to compare this play to Kidnapped, and I think it keeps coming out in this review that despite how much I enjoyed it on the whole, it really did strike me how much it is exactly like an earlier work by the same creator, very similar in some ways but less polished and just not quite so good. Perhaps I'm being unfair: I love Pride and Prejudice as a story but I don't love it like I love Kidnapped, and I certainly wasn't able to do the play Kidnapped justice in my opinion of it until I'd watched it multiple times. Well, if this play does keep touring in future I'll try to go and see it again, and then maybe I'll like it even better.
But oh, my darling fave, that all this success had been yours too... </3
