Alison Blanchard, Holly Sidell, Michael Mullen, Steven G. Frankenfield, Katyana Rocker-cook. Todd Andrew Ball, Megan Deford (Photo by Syrie James)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Theatre 40
Through October 13
RECOMMENDED
Whether you are a Jane Austen devotee or not, Theatre 40’s current production of Jane Austen in 89 Minutes has considerable charm and entertainment value, even for the uninitiated.
The play is a “contracted” recapitulation of Austen’s work, book by book, in the order in which they were written. Writer/director Syrie James, an established romance novelist who has written several fictionalized novels featuring Austen as a central protagonist, offers us a breezy introductory primer, complete with plenty of fascinating biographical details about Austen’s own, too short life.
Sense and Sensibility, the opening segment, commences with an awkwardly expositional summation that prompts the line “That’s a great deal of backstory to cram into one sentence” — our first clue that James’s take is hardly academic or reverential. Actors frequently break the fourth wall and encourage the audience to respond with cheers or jeers. (One character’s predilection for “young ladies, 15 years of age” elicits healthy “boos.”)
Jane Austen herself (Katyana Rocker-Cook) functions as host and narrator, while a lively cast of various “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” (Holly Sidell, Michael Mullen, Stephen G. Frankenfield, Alison Blanchard, Todd Ball and Shayna Gabrielle (alternating with Megan Deford) play the multiple roles. James, who has frequently portrayed Austen in period attire, artfully delineates the characters with an array of fast-change costumes from her Regency-era “closet.”
Allusions to film and television adaptations include Mr. Darcy (Mullen), spritzing his thin white shirt with a spray bottle, a comical reference to Colin Firth’s famously sexy lakeside dip in the 1995 miniseries, and two ardent Austen fans arguing heatedly about who was the best Darcy, Firth or Matthew Macfadyen from the 2005 film with Keira Knightly. (The audience was firmly in Firth’s corner.)
James’s wryness effectively balances the delightfully over-the-top performers, who frequently step outside their characters to offer caustic observations. Regarding her romantic travails, the reticent and sensible Eleanor Dashwood (Sidell) from Sensibility exasperatedly comments, “I shall suffer in silence, because that was how I was written,” while Mansfield Park’s similarly oppressed Fanny Price (Gabrielle) knowingly remarks, “I must be patient as all passive heroines are.”
Passive and long-suffering heroines are just one of the commonalities in Austen’s novels, as James points out. Others include Austen’s omnipresent ballroom scenes and her frequent use of revelatory letters to further her plots. James’s necessarily streamlined playlets (after all, we have 89 minutes and counting) are breathlessly paced, while important story points we fear were elided are briskly summed up in a sentence or two, without losing clarity.
James sometimes lapses into farce, running certain gags into the ground, as when a desktop bell is “comically” rung whenever a novel’s name is referenced. But the broad humor is countered by James’s deep knowledge of her subject, which gives unexpected depth to this diverting and informative enterprise.
Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. Fri.-Sat,, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. thru Oct. 13. (310) 364-0535. http://theatre40.org Running time: 89 minutes with no intermission.
