What a pleasure to experience again this tight and tidy adaptation originally created for Snap Theatre Company many years ago by Roger Parsley and Andy Graham. It’s also a mercy that it isn’t one of the Austen novels that has been performed to death in recent years.
Norman Coates designed the elegant Wedgwood blue set and white classical columns, with action on a central circle and projected etchings above. The musician/performers are at the back, playing and singing Julian Littman’s arrangements of traditional songs.
Pam Jolley, making her Queen’s debut, gives us a very good clear picture of Marianne’s impulsive, impractical romantic delusions. If she can moderate a tendency to squeak her lines, her performance will be even better. But at least it means you can trace the family line back to Karen Mann’s cackling, foghorn voice as Aunt Jennings, who has something of the panto dame about her, as she meddles delightedly in everyone else’s business.
Francesca Loren’s oh so composed and level-headed Elinor bides her time for the happy ending. Gentlemen come and go with misunderstandings involving Elliot Harper’s double act of Louis Theroux lookalike Edward Ferrars and dashingly swaggering Willoughby, plus Marcus Webb’s diffident, ramrod straight, almost myopic Colonel Brandon.
Sarah Scowen’s confident Lucy Steele gives a straightforward performance.
Matt Devitt directs with the emphasis on accessibility for the audience. In house costumes are very effective but budget restrictions due to their lavishness and that of the set means we are denied a third man in the cast. Which would have been nice.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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