THEATRE
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (SORT OF)
TRON THEATRE, GLASGOW
Reviewed by Mark Brown
“There is nothing new under the sun”, the Good Book tells us, and it is certainly true of this tongue-in-cheek, all-female take on Jane Austen’s most celebrated novel Pride and Prejudice. Isobel McArthur’s liberal adaptation is so knowingly ironic that it seems, for the most part, as if it should be performed in huge inverted commas.
Director Paul Brotherston’s young cast (which includes McArthur herself as various characters, including Darcy and Mrs Bennett) deconstruct Austen’s early-19th century England, purposefully reconstructing it for our own times. The outrageous sexual politics and snobbery observed by Austen (and, by implication, the continuing social inequalities and hypocrisies of today) take a very deliberate pasting.
Period costumes collide with modern props, Regency English mores clash starkly with a very contemporary, expletive-laden language. At one point, the excellent Meghan Tyler’s Elizabeth Bennett comes on-stage in a 19th-century frock eating from a box of Kellogg’s Frosties.
The piece, in which a karaoke machine and a plastic beer crate are key props, is peppered copiously with modern pop music (both recorded and performed live). Candi Staton’s disco classic Young Hearts Run Free gets an outing, as does Something Changed by Pulp.
A scene in which Elizabeth is admonished by the cartoonishly monstrous Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Christina Gordon) includes the aristocrat introducing the latest composition by a member of her family, The Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh.
There is no question that British culture’s attachment to the lavish costume drama (not least on television) is ripe for satire. It is also long overdue, given the theatre’s history of men playing women on stage due to misogynistic prohibitions, that male characters should be performed by women in an entirely female cast.
Not only that, but the actors are impressive to a woman, not least in the play’s moments of neat comedy (such as McArthur freezing in a suddenly appearing picture frame to represent a portrait of Darcy). However, the show’s inclination to almost farcical levity problematises the scenes in which it attempts to generate a real sense of pathos.
Ultimately, one can’t help but feel that one has been here many times before, and that the play is simply repeating a very narrow repertoire of postmodern devices. The production has the feel of a short fringe show, and is certainly too long at two hours and 45 minutes.
Until July 14
This review was originally published on the website of the Daily Telegraph on June 30, 2018
©Mark Brown
Scottish Stage 