Eileen Caiger-Gray reviews PRIDE AND PREJUDICE at SHEFFIELD CRUCIBLE May 19th 2015
The challenges of staging a 140-minute play adaptation of Pride and Prejudice are pretty daunting. With the story and characters so familiar, so beloved and so definitively enacted on screen, injecting freshness and impact is a tricky business.
In this new dramatisation by Simon Reade, both set design and choreography in dance and movement come up trumps in the freshness and impact department, courtesy of designer Lez Brotherton and choreographer Scott Ambler (who have previously collaborated and won design awards on Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures.)
Isabella Laughland (Elizabeth Bennet)
True, the set seems puzzling at first, its imposing, jagged, wooden framework with dangling chandelier seeming to suggest shipwreck, while onstage, outdoors mixes with indoors as grassy tussocks and gravel interrupt a vast chequered floor, set with two long, irregular-edged steps.
Yet it all works exceedingly well, enabling a beautiful, elegant flow of movement and action that blends one scene into another, nicely enhanced by Richard Taylor’s (for the most part) unobtrusive music (apart from a burst of rock music near the start and a harpsichord that plays itself).
Creative touches with simple props – such as a stretched tablecloth – provide surprises, and, when the stage is full of people and movement, as at balls, having characters deliver dialogue atop simple wooden table, chairs, benches and harpsichord works well. All this, though, might not please sticklers for straight, traditional renditions.
Contemporary elements have been added into dance, action (a slapped face for Mr D) and costume (Lizzy’s Ramblers’ jacket and cap, for instance, and Darcy’s jeans) but there’s plenty that sticks with the more traditional.
James Northcote (Mr Darcy and Isabella Laughland (Elizabeth Bennet)
This version is less neat and pretty, less genteel than some. It’s more rough and ready, more earthy (even Mr Bingley looks slightly dishevelled) and fine make-up and perfect hairdos, quite rightly, have been given the elbow. Indeed the characters look the very antithesis of the elegant creatures pictured on the programme and promotions.
Maximum emphasis has been placed on fun and humour, culminating in a denouement that’s a bit of a romp. Less time is spent dwelling on heartache, on subtleties and balance, on bringing depth to characters or injecting intimate chemistry into relationships, while, by necessity, the ins and outs of the plot have to be hurried along. Oh yes… and both the Bennets and the Darcys are mixed race families!
Michele Austin’s very loud, very melodramatic, somewhat crass and crude Mrs Bennet elicits a major share of the laughter. Howard Ward is endearing as her wry, good-hearted husband, Grace Chilton’s Mary seems overly deranged, and Ronke Adekoluejo has very little to do in her role as Jane.
James Northcote performs tolerably well as nasty-but-nice Darcy and Isabella Laughland is agreeable as forthright Elizabeth.
This visually intriguing, perhaps controversial, mix makes for a lively, enjoyable production overall.
Eileen Caiger Gray
Pride and Prejudice runs at The Crucible until June 6th
