Review of Cincinnati P&P production highlights “flaws” in original

The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s production of Pride and Prejudice found mixed reviews at KyPost.com and I can’t help but feel that the negatives match closely those problems my particular friend Lee has with the Jane Austen classic. (Before I continue, let me say I would love to see this production and I am an unabashed fan, enthusiast, devotee, whatever, of P&P.)

“… it’s hard to sit by while 15 actors skate through scene after scene of arch Austen-esque dialogue … with forced accents and scant sensitivity to underlying relationships or emotional subtext.” Ouch, a rather hard criticism from reviewer Julie York Coppens, but I heard similar complaints (excluding forced accents and theater review jargon) from Lee after reading P&P (or at least seven chapters of it) and after reading (giving up after two-thirds of it) of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

She did sort of enjoy the 1995 BBC film but watched it in a desultory fashion. To her credit, she still wanted to read it, but found the original too slow. I thought P&P&Z would at least cement the basic plot. But even with zombies she just didn’t care enough about the characters to finish the book.

I often wonder if I would be the Austen fan I am if I hadn’t watched all the Austen adaptations on PBS Masterpiece before reading the books. I learned a Regency shorthand that made it possible to appreciate and sympathize with the characters.

I think part of Lee’s problem stemmed from the fact that she viewed the Bennets as rich people with servants living in a mansion complaining about how cruel fate will treat them when Mr. Bennet dies. I tried explaining about the entail and primogeniture but aside from Elizabeth and Jane, she really didn’t care about the Bennets.

The KyPost reviewer also mentions that some of the best characters, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine do not evolve and lack dimension and maybe that criticism is true. “Even Elizabeth’s emotional arc from the first scene to the last feels shallow,” says Coppens, and in some ways I agree this is true of the source material. Although I argue that Elizabeth, despite her flawed perceptions, is a well-grounded sensible person from beginning to end and that is precisely why I adore her. Why would I want her to change? As I argued in my very first diary entry, she weighs her relationship with Darcy very carefully and Pemberley is just one more thing to put on the plus side.

P&P, I think, is a very unromantic romance; it’s passion for the level headed. And yet I think once Elizabeth makes up her mind that she does love Darcy, she embraces that love. And the reviewer acknowledges this, when after two hours (and many months of fictional time) “our endurance is rewarded beyond all expectation” when stars Sara Clark and Ian Bond finally kiss.

For more information about the performance, visit http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/event-28654-pride-and-prejudice.html