Pride & Prejudice

If there's one quality that permeates the genteel classes of the early nineteenth century as Jane Austen depicts them in Pride and Prejudice, it must be subtlety.  No crass rudeness, nothing to discomfit another, no overwrought expression passes the lips of Austen's characters, because it is not necessary that it should do so.  Even the crassest of characters, Mrs Bennett, was so only by comparison with the paragons of gentility whom she set out to impress, and today would pass unnoticed in any Australian city as just another loudmouth.

So it's especially delightful to see such characters rendered with equal subtlety in John Spicer's stage adaptation of the novel (which he directed in its original Rep season 25 years ago), and to see its present season directed,  despite its director's youth, with almost the finesse that Austen herself might have used.

The opening scene's seamless and delightful dissolution into the Bennetts' drawing room through choreography on a rotating set led into a play replete (despite Mrs Bennett!) with the quiet wit of the original, which surely must have inspired Oscar Wilde.  Rep's actors brought to life perfectly all the individuality that Austen's perceptiveness imbued in her characters, and did so with style.  Lighting and a marvellous set design matched the play for suitable inventiveness, and a soundtrack quietly sounding at poignant moments worked to brilliant emotional effect.

This play will stay with you for many chuckles. Don't miss it.

John P. Harvey

Image: Helen McFarlane, Emily Ridge, Stephanie Roberts, Lottie Bull, and Sam Hannan-Morrow, in Pride & Prejudice. Photographer: Cliff Spong.