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| Amanda Yachechak, Lissa Moira, James Parks, and Emily Hin in PRIDE & PREJUDICE - A MUSICAL. Photo by Peter Welch. |
Adapting
a complex literary classic such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for the stage is a difficult task. Turning that adaptation into a musical is
even harder, requiring the seamless integration of a musical score into the work. And doing it all as an off off Broadway production
is hardest of all, given that venue’s spatial constraints and limited
resources.
But
that is just what Theater for the New City has just pulled off with its current
staging of Pride & Prejudice – A New
Musical: a musical production that hews closely to the novel’s original
story lines, employs an exuberantly talented cast of 19, and provides its
audience with three solid hours of theatrical fun.
Which
is not to say that this show doesn’t have its flaws. It does.
The score is derivative, the lyrics are pedestrian and I didn’t leave
the theater humming any of its tunes.
The choreography is repetitive and clumsy, as it focuses almost
exclusively on a half dozen couples engaged in one or another reel-style dance and
the theater’s stage is too small to accommodate them all comfortably. The sets and the costumes are serviceable but
not memorable.
What
is redeeming about the play in the face of those shortcomings, however, is its
fealty to Jane Austen’s original novel, the attractiveness and talent of its
enthusiastic cast and, most especially, the extraordinary operatic voices of
many of the actors. They may not have
had the best musical material to work with but their renditions of the songs
they were given were absolutely extraordinary.
The
primary plot line revolves around the desire of Mr. Bennet (Robert Charles
Russell) and Mrs. Bennet (Henrietta Stevenson) to marry off their five
daughters: Jane (Stephanie Leone), Elizabeth (Amanda Yachechak), Mary (Britney
Simone), Kitty (Hallie Wage), and Lydia (Rebecca Knowles). The pressure on Mr. and Mrs. Bennet to do so is
considerable since the British laws of “entail” at that time prevented Mr.
Bennet from bequeathing his property upon his death to anyone but a male heir;
since he had fathered no sons and had five daughters, it meant that upon his
death, his property would go to his closest male relative, his cousin Mr.
Collins (James Parks). And that meant
that if his daughters did not marry well, they would be left homeless and
helpless upon his demise for what else was a respectable but relatively
uneducated woman good for at that time other than to be a wife and homemaker?
Jane
falls in love with the dashing Mr. Bingley (Chris Donovan) and he with her
(although it takes a while before each realizes that the other shares his or
her passion). But not to worry: by
play’s end, they are engaged. Headstrong
Elizabeth is a tougher case: Mr. Collins proposes to her and had she accepted
his proposal, it would have provided a neat solution to the problem of the
family estate: the home in which she had grown up would have remained hers
after Mr. Collins inherited it from her father.
But Elizabeth dismisses him out of hand: that would be too big a price
to pay. At which point Mr. Collins
transfers his affections to Elizabeth’s best friend, Charlotte (Emily Hin),
who, being more practical than her friend, accepts his proposal to their mutual
advantage.
But
back to Elizabeth. She finds herself strongly
attracted to Mr. Bingley’s good friend, Darcy (Jonathan Fox Powers), but
simultaneously repelled by his diffident, prideful style and his questionable
past. Wickham (Thom Brown III), the son
of Darcy’s father’s one-time steward, claims to have been mistreated by Darcy
for no other reason than their class difference, a claim which, if true, the
egalitarian (for her time) Elizabeth could not possibly abide. As it turns out, of course, it is Wickham who
is the villain of the piece and Darcy the hero.
True
to his villainous nature, Wickham seduces Lydia, the youngest and most innocent
of the Bennet children, and runs off with her – and it is Darcy who comes to
the rescue. He makes the very best of a
bad situation by assuring that Wickham does, indeed, marry Lydia, thereby
making an honest woman of her, restoring her family’s reputation (and chalking
up another marriage for the Bennet family). Darcy also lets Elizabeth know the
truth about his and Wickham’s past relationship, thereby further restoring his
own honor as well. As you might expect,
after that, Elizabeth’s marriage to Darcy is inevitable.
And
so, by play’s end, three of the Bennet daughters have been married off: Jane to
Mr.Bingley, Elizabeth to Darcy, and Lydia to Wickham. That still leaves Kitty, of course, but, with
her considerable beauty and sex appeal (at least as played by Ms Wage), I doubt
if she will lack for male proposals.
And
Mary will always have her books.
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