Sydney Reviews

This rollicking musical take on Jane Austen’s beloved novel is a side-splitting crowd pleaser.

The novel tells the well-known romantic comedy in over 120,000 words that would take more than 7 hours to read. Even allowing for most audiences having a general idea of the plot, it’s a challenge to distil into a 2-hour show.

Writer Isobel McArthur uses household servants to break the fourth wall, tell us what we need to know, and keep the story bouncing along.

In Austen’s fiction, servants are rarely seen and almost never named. McArthur’s device is subversive and refreshing, with each servant both named and opinionated.

We are wowed when we enter the theatre to Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s set that frames the stage with towering bookshelves and a grand staircase. The staircase evokes not only the regency period glamour of grand houses, but also Busby Berkeley musical films and even Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ film clip.

The compact cast of 5 female performers enters through the audience, dusting, cleaning and joking with the latecomers. They all wear white, short sleeved shifts and corsets with Doc Martin style lace-up boots.

Each player steps in and out of various other characters, adding gaudy costume pieces to signify their assumed identities.

Amy Lehpamer plays Tillie, the Bennet family’s housekeeper as well as Charlotte Lucas and both the Bingley siblings. Her cartoonishly grotesque Caroline Bingley is a masterclass in physical comedy.

As both Mrs Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, diminutive Zoe Ioannou perfectly captures the ridiculousness of Austen’s characters. Mr Darcy as a pint-sized, Lord Byron wannabe, is a perfect antidote to the show-stealing, too-sexy-for-my-lake Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC adaptation.

Golden moments include a full-sized model horse being wheeled onto the stage and mounted by Jane Bennet (Kaori Maeda-Judge) ahead of her perilous ride to Netherfield Park.

Later, as Lady Catherine De Bourgh, Maeda-Judge makes a spectacular and electric entrance to rain her fury down on the defiant Elizabeth Bennet (Teo Vergara).

Unlike traditional musicals where original songs carry significant plot points, Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) uses well known pop songs to amplify romantic tropes. Some numbers are performed as karaoke while others have live accompaniment by accomplished cast members playing a range of stringed, reed and percussion instruments. Throughout, the sound design is underpinned with original composition by Michael John McCarthy. 

Some characters from the novel have been culled to streamline the show. While one doesn’t really miss Kitty Bennet or Mr Gardiner, losing the acerbic wit of Mr Bennet does seem like a shame.

Nonetheless, this show is a fresh and highly enjoyable take on Austen’s timeless tale of women’s housing insecurity in a patriarchal world – it never gets old!