All images by Mihaela Bodlovic
Homage to the great novelist – or a parody of her most famous book? Or both? Has David Pugh’s production crossed the line? In the years since the last version the play has become, rougher, tougher – and in an odd way more masculine - odd as it’s an all -women affair. Since the sensational début, the production has hotted up. The Bennet sisters live with their mother (hysterically fixed on getting them wed) and an almost non-existent father (represented by the back of a chair and a newspaper). Their comfortable home has servants (same actors as the sisters). From the outset we get a look through the servants’ perspective but not for long. The grand house nearby has a new tenant - single and ‘possessed of a fortune’ and therefore ‘in need of a wife’. Mrs. Bennet, a vigorous vocal Scottish matriarch gets in gear, and the action takes off.
Delightful as it is to get a close-up view of the action, the characters are incongruously outspoken – the play got louder and swearier as it progressed – Elizabeth Bennett stands at one point and bellows at the top of her lungs “F_U_C-K“! A welter of sexy double-entendres appear more and more often as the characters draw away from their nineteenth century moorings and become indignant, straight- talking, infuriated women of the twenty first.
Pride and Prejudice (sort of) packed the Arts theatre to the gunnels last night (a Monday at that) There was hardly a seat free in entire auditorium. That’s how far this Jane Austen-themed show has come in the nine years since Scottish scribe Isobel McArthur wrote it for the small Glasgow Tron theatre. A random visit to a second-hand bookshop and she had come away with a copy of the famous novel – she had never read it. The script she produced romped away with the collective imagination of the city and beyond, five top Northern theatres commissioned it – as did The Cambridge Arts. It got a rapturous reception back then, pre- Covid.
The songs are still fun and brilliantly well performed by Georgia May Firth, Eva Hope, Roxanne Morgan and especially Phoebe Marshall. There are more of them, and every niche has a microphone, and a speaker stands by to blast out a wall of sound. As the first act wound up to more slapstick and capers, audience response heightened, and it ended in a pile of pantomime chaos.
The second act was a tonic. The intriguing plot took us to Mr Darcy’s Derbyshire of Colin Firth fame. The snarky sniping between him and Lizzie resolves and her misplaced fury with him melts into a love she recognizes, -in spite of herself. Songs beautifully sung and the action even ends as the audience demands, with a powerful number from ever-scholarly Kitty - a final fabulous rendition of Young Hearts Run Free.
Yes, a tour de force for some, but you are warned, as well as a deep dive into modern mores, this has now morphed into entertainment and rock ‘n roll.
