Play Version of "Pride and Prejudice"

 

Image found here. Photo by Brian Knapp

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite stories. I grew up watching the BBC mini series (my mom seemed to watch it once a month; it's to the point that my parents have pretty much memorized every single line of dialogue), and I read the book my senior year of high school. It's a fun, romantic commentary on Victorian society, particularly regarding women. So when I saw that the Writer's Center in Bethesda was showing a play version, I bought tickets off Goldstar for a great deal. 

I thought this was a wonderful production! I felt the play was true to the original book, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself (despite the show starting ten minutes late). Here are my main take-aways:

Actors

The actors playing Mr. and Mrs. Bennett (Tom Howley and Andrea Spitz, respectively) acted JUST like the parents in the mini series. And Katherine Leiden, playing Lizzy, was clearly inspired by Keira Knightley from the feature film (which is rubbish. Don't bother with anything other than the mini series!). Her accent and voice were nearly identical to those of the famous actress, and she even mimicked her facial expressions and other mannerisms. I wonder how many times she watched the movie to do that... Leiden was also quite sunburned from the day before, which killed the character a bit for me, because a proper Victorian woman never would have been in the sun like that. And I don't know if it was the sunburn, but her eyes and cheeks looked so sallow, it was almost distracting. My other favorite actors from this show were Amanda Dullin-Jones as the annoying youngest sister Lydia, Nicholas Temple as Darcy (I saw him in "Perfect Arrangement" at Silver Spring Stage, as well as "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the same venue, and he was great in both of those, too!), and Declan Cashman as Catherine de Bourgh (such a great character to hate!). 

Set

The play opens up (and uses throughout) Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, which is one of my favorites (it's the same music used in the unicorn/centaur scene of Fantasia). So I immensely enjoyed hearing that during breaks and such. The physical set had an indoor-outdoor field so that it could easily represent either setting. There were multiple entrance ways to allow the actors to walk in and out as if they were walking through a house from room to room, which I thought was quite clever. The lighting was a bit off: they were using purplish light (perhaps because it's less harsh), which made the actors' hair look magenta. At first I actually thought that one of the actresses had pink hair! 

Length

I have to admit that I have a short attention span and tend to get a little antsy. I admire that they were able to distill the book down into less than three hours (I think the mini series is six!), but it was still too long for my liking. There were a few dancing scenes that I thought were unnecessary, or at the very least could have been shortened. And the second act was longer than the first, which is unusual. While I did like the show very much, I was ready to be home as the second act was only just beginning to wind down. 

Even with my minor complaints, I still really enjoyed this play. Bravo!