FringeReview UK 2024
Pride and Prejudice
Guildford Shakespeare Company and Jermyn Street Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, classical, Comedic, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Jermyn Street Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Adapted as an uproarious three-hander by Abigail Pickard with Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches, Pride and Prejudice is directed by Pickard till September 3rd.
An unalloyed delight, compressing the story but revealing things even those who know the novel will take back to it.
Written by Jane Austen and Adapted by Abigail Pickard Price with Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches, and Directed by Abigail Pickard Price, Set and Costume Designer Neil Irish, Costume Supervisor Anett Black, Lighting Designer Mark Dymock, Sound Designer Matt Eaton, Movement Director Amy Lawrence, Vocal Coach Sterre Maier, Stage Manager Hannah Walker
PR David Burns, Photography Mark Dean, Artwork Dreamfly
Till September 3rd
Review
This is a winner but it’s not here long. Jermyn Street Theatre has enjoyed the dubious pleasure of Wickham’s company recently, in the person of Adrian Lukis’ eponymous one man show. Jane Austen’s rogue male in Pride and Prejudice now returns with the whole novel straight from the Guildford Shakespeare Company. Adapted as an uproarious three-hander by Abigail Pickard with Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches, Pride and Prejudice is directed by Pickard till September 3rd.
Luke Barton, Sarah Gobran and April Hughes play seventeen of the novel’s characters with Neil Irish’s dazzling set of silver and brass lattice backdrop. Costumes are slipped on and off. Notable is the miniature jacket Hughes shrugs on playing Bingley.
The set piece where three actors hold a tablecloth flicking on headdresses or jackets as five characters at dinner is just the most virtuosic. Shout out to costume supervisor Anett Black, and Amy Lawrence’s movement direction for such seamless work in an intimate space.
Mark Dymock’s lighting too is subtle, playing sylvan greens in woods encounters and subtly shifting between ball-scenes and lit interiors.
Hughes apart from shuffling into Bingley is mostly Elizabeth or Lizzie, though she occasionally doubles as one of her younger siblings. The best sequence comes when Hughes, reading each sibling by lightning has them exit in a series of slam-door moments as each try escaping from Mr Collins. Elizabeth jams her hand in the door and wriggles it out: painfully funny.
Both radiant and witty with elegant delivery, Hughes is electrifying in her vehement rejection of her second proposal of marriage – this time one from Darcy. Her build of Lizzie’s outrage and conflicting emotions explodes both at Darcy and as he leaves, herself in tears. It’s not explicitly in the book but far more communicative of Austen’s intentions. Her response too to Lady Catherine is full of point and fire.
Elsewhere Hughes irradiates diffident Bingley with his attacks of thumb-in-mouth: indeed here he’s almost aphasic. His great moment is a whispered proposal and a yelp from Gobran.
Co-adaptor Gobran takes on giant roles. Her Mrs Bennett exudes provincial snobbery and mercurial venality, less the over-emphasised bag of nerves (alluded to early) and more the anxiety-witted plotter of her daughters’ survival. She’s not without poignancy, though from wanting Lydia dead then saying seamlessly she knew all along it would work out, is delicious.
There’s a quiet radiance to Gobran’s Jane, rising to her over-modest “too happy”. Gobran’s Charlotte Lucas frumps herself (as Hughes did with comb-fronted Mary) all spectacles and shrewdly bitter realpolitik, prizing herself no higher than Mr Collins, stating marital happiness is pure chance. As Mrs Gardiner (donned with green-lined cloak and hat) local Derbyshire comes to Pemberley. Sterre Maier’s vocal work render this true of all three actors’ seamlessly-shifting accents,
Barton certainly looks pure Darcy, and both manages Darcy’s stand-offish arrogance and his ardent crumbling with perfectly timed naturalness. What he brings uniquely to Darcy is a man humbled and contrite, and most of all vulnerable in the climactic scene with Hughes.
As Mr Bennett donning a buff coat and spectacles he seems cask-aged in mellow self-deprecation (rather than old buffer), particularly with Gobran’s uffish Mrs Bennett and quietly with Hughes. His tours-de-farce though as stumbling pompous Mr Collins are only trounced by his Lady Catherine de Burgh in full silver regalia and tiara, strutting her pomp in the vicarage garden or darting back after Hughes’ Lizzie has challenged her at her own table (there is one on occasion).
As tattle Mrs Reynolds and above all as Kitty or Lydia with a little red fascinator, Barton enjoys some delectable flirting with her imagined self and Mr Bennett. Barton also seamlessly flips from Darcy’s Housekeeper to Darcy in a portrait frame – sound mischievously synched.
And poor Wickham. He does strut and smarm his minute on the stage, realised here by Barton with a simpering disingenuousness.
Barton and Hughes’ most theatrical moment comes with music early on. Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart and late 18th century British music is eclipsed by Irish, in Matt Eaton’s sound design. Lizzie starts playing John Field’s hot-off-the-press Nocturne No. 4: she’s joined and even accompanied by Barton as their fingers almost interlace. It’s a scene full of erotic subtext and tangled plot.
A gem of an adaptation, triumphantly vindicating the Guildford Shakespeare Company’s adaptations: their All’s Well here in 2019 featuring six actors was outstanding. An unalloyed delight, compressing the story but revealing things even those who know the novel will take back to it.
