The Court Theatre’s world premiere of Sense and Sensibility is a production of flair, noise and caricature. Whilst playwright Penny Ashton and director Hillary Moulder have a good handle on adapting the narrative dimensions of the source material, this production struggles to make any of it matter. For audience members new to Austen, this is unlikely to be an issue. But for audience members who already love Austen, this approach could be a tough pill to swallow.
A critic has two responsibilities when reviewing material:
- to take stock of the work itself;
- to assess what feelings the work produced for the reviewer as an individual.
To this end, some important background: I am well and truly in my Jane Austen era. In absolutely every respect at this particular stage in my life, Jane Austen’s books are on my mind almost daily, and have been for months. I love most adaptations of her work including Emma Thompson and Ang Lee’s pitch-perfect 1995 adaptation of Sense & Sensibility. That poses two facts regarding The Court Theatre’s production of the same novel, the first of their 2023 season:
- I am part of the target audience for this production;
- I am a Jane Austen purist.
The other foundational considerations that underpin this review are about the nature of reviewing itself, especially when reviewing an adaptation of a classic like this:
- This review must discuss Austen’s work;
- This review must discuss playwright Ashton and director Moulder’s interpretation of Austen’s work.
Let us begin with the novel, and return to the production after that. [Note that this review will discuss the conclusion of the novel and play]
Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility introduces us to three sisters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, and their widowed mother, Mrs. Dashwood. The novel begins with the four women moving away from the estate on which the sisters grew up. Their move is motivated by the English system of inheritance, as their brother, John, inherits the estate following their father’s death. Marianne, Elinor, Margaret and Mrs. Dashwood are left financially destitute, and without support of any kind from John; their best chance of social mobility depends on the sisters marrying well. Enter Edward Ferrars, a wet blanket but a nice guy. Enter Colonel Brandon, a man of heartbreak and few words. And, of course, enter Willoughby, the 1811 version of a player who happens also to play at being a romantic hero. The rest of the novel tracks the different approaches to life of Elinor, who represents sense (as in ‘good sense,’ ‘is sensible’) and Marianne, who represents sensibility (as in ‘is emotional,’ ‘prioritizes taste and feeling’). Elinor is interested in Edward Ferrars from the first time she meets him. By the end of the novel, despite various plot twists along the way, Elinor is married to Edward. Marianne, on the other hand, falls in love with Willoughby, only to end up married to Colonel Brandon by the end of the novel.
Austen’s work is often interpreted in one of two ways. Early interpretations of the novel viewed it as a kind of moral fable about the virtues of marriage for young women. It was accepted for many years that Elinor’s sense finally wins over Marianne’s sensibility, as Elinor gets what she wanted all along, whilst Marianne has to adapt to a more ‘sense’-oriented way of living in accepting Colonel Brandon’s proposal. Later feminist literary critics however have complicated the picture somewhat, arguing that the novel is about the ways patriarchal control is inflicted upon women as Austen’s female characters either manipulate a patriarchal inheritance system, thereby becoming agents of it, or are manipulated by a patriarchal inheritance system, thereby getting trapped in it. The interpretation that I agree with most, however, comes from feminist critic Claudia Johnson, who argues that rather than a moral fable, Sense & Sensibility is a “disenchanted novel” that presents the social institutions of marriage and inheritance in a negative light. Johnson argues, crucially, that both Willoughby and Ferrars are ultimately the same.
When I reread the novel in preparation for this Court Theatre production, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that Austen viewed marriage as a kind of purgatorial social trap – that in fact she falls on the side of Marianne after all. It is possible, of course, that I could be imposing my own contemporary feminist ideals upon a text from two centuries ago. But Austen is, as Karen Joy Fowler puts it, “a historian of a particular class at a particular moment,” and in observing a system ‘as is,’ she inherently critiques that system. As Fay Weldon put it, “the reason no one married [Austen] was…it was just all too much. Something truly frightening rumbled there beneath the bubbling mirth…”
So with that, let’s take stock of this production.
Ashton’s script and Moulder’s direction both rely on an anachronistic approach to the source material. Much of the dialogue is lifted directly from Austen’s book, but there are significant concessions for expository clarity, and some clever shorthand usage of terms like ‘mumsy,’ ‘sister’ and the like that help the audience locate familial relationships in a play all about that. It is a great credit to Ashton’s script that who is who is always clear. The anachronisms sneak in around the edges, for example as one of the sisters talks about how hard it is to find a house in 1811 – “it’s a housing crisis!” she says. It feels in these moments like Ashton is pushing to make sure we all know just how relevant the text is. The problem, though, is that Austen simply still is relevant. I get the firm feeling that we don’t need a playwright to put the relevance in caps lock, underline it, and highlight it for us to accept the relevance of the text. It’s already there.
The other anachronisms – and those of more interest to me – exist in the wonderful set by Julian Southgate. The program notes say that Southgate’s set replicates the Georgian era including in its usage of outdated theatrical techniques. For example, flat scenery provides the backdrop for many scenes, which means that the actors cannot interact with their surroundings. The set is wonderful, jaw-dropping, even, especially as the anachronistically Georgian setting works as a nice juxtaposition to the anachronistically contemporary dialogue. I got a kick out of the mostly contemporary music choices, and also got great amusement from the use of Concerto No. 2 in G Minor L’Estate (Summer) by Vivaldi, which is most recognisable to me from Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, a marital drama in its own right about the corruption of patriarchal social systems.
The other most important consideration in the overall vision for this production is that all roles are played by six women, allowing for a total evisceration of the logic of a patriarchal system.
Kathleen Burns is cast as both Edward Ferrars and Willoughby, for instance, perhaps gesturing toward Claudia Johnson’s analysis of Willoughby and Ferrars as characters with similar moral failings. There is an implicit danger here, an undercurrent of darkness, like in all of the best Austen comedies. On this front, again, Kathleen Burns wins the day: I got a legitimate chill when her version of Willoughby said “I won’t take no for an answer,” a moment of anachronistic language that is utterly perfectly poised by both playwright and performer. Burns also plays the geriatric Mrs. Jennings and nails the tone of Austen’s book. On stage, this character is both caricature and sensitively observed. That’s a tall order, and speaks volumes to Burns’ impulse and Moulder’s direction.
The biggest challenge for the production in its complex casting is an overwhelming sense of camp. Now, to be clear, ‘camp’ in itself is not a negative identifier… but in this case the camp approach to the material does not serve it well. One of the great joys of Austen is the degree to which her characters emerge as caricaturistic within a particular sociocultural milieu. This production makes the rather strange decision of ‘camping’ most characters such that their caricatures are the primary trait and that the general sociocultural milieu is sublimated underneath the camp.
Once again, Kathleen Burns shines and astounds in the face of this. In her final scene as Edward Ferrars, she completely sells his climactic moment, when he (who has only been able to talk about the weather thus far) suddenly espouses his feelings and finally tells Elinor how he feels. Ang Lee’s 1995 adaptation is the ne plus ultra Sense & Sensibility, but even the great Hugh Grant couldn’t get this moment right. Burns nails it so hard it almost made me forget any prior issues I may have had with the production.
The camp approach is also utilized well by Eilish Moran in her pitch-perfect rendition of Mrs. Palmer and her hilarious, disgusting approach to Mr. Robert Ferrars. Rebekah Head has possibly the most challenging roles in the show, and approaches all admirably. Bianca Paine’s Elinor stands out as someone with ‘sense’ among the surrounding crowd of caricaturistic individuals, and Paine carries the emotional core of the show strongly.
I am less convinced by Natasha McAllister’s Marianne. Marianne is governed by her emotions more than by social convention – shouldn’t this be at least a little charming? It’s hard to place exactly what is wrong with the approach, but it speaks volumes that this Marianne registers as campier and more caricaturistic than pretty much all of the male characters.
Kim Garrett oscillates between both modes – I am mostly convinced by her approach to the material, and her John Middleton is a genuine highlight of the production. I find this production’s approach to Fanny Dashwood, however, utterly confounding. Yes, Fanny is a villain. I just wish it was a little more implicit.
If my biases toward Austen and away from reinterpretation are somewhat revealed in this review, so be it. I am trying to grasp both the show and my feelings toward it. Around a quarter of the audience gave this a standing ovation on opening night, so my feelings were clearly not unanimous. I suspect, though, that for those like me who view Austen primarily as a cynic, primarily as a subversive feminist figure, this production’s conclusion might grate – after all is said and done, the Elinor of this production clearly has the right idea, moreso than Marianne. This production has radical elements, no doubt about it. And yet the ending still rings a little like a moral fable – this production still feels as if it falls on Elinor’s side, without much interrogating why.
So in sum, what do I feel?
I feel Jane Austen is one of the greatest artists that has ever lived. I feel that her work is well and truly alive. I feel that her work is well and truly relevant. I feel that this production gets a lot of things right, but that those things don’t cohere in any meaningful way. Most of the virtues of this production belong to Jane Austen herself.
Sense and Sensibility plays Court Theatre 11 February till 11 March, 2023.
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