Pride & Prejudice

I attended Whittier College’s production of Pride & Prejudice today. Before coming into the performance, I already had an expectation of what I would be seeing. Yes, I know, this is never how you should approach theatre, but how could you not with Austen’s masterpiece. I have read the novel and watched the Keira Knightley film multiple times. What can I say; I am in love with the piece. This, however, set me up for a great disappointment once the performance began. Overall, the production was just okay. There was nothing spectacularly amazing about it and yet it was not horribly terrible. Accents were the first thing that caught my attention. Considering that the entire plot is set in England, it would seem as though the British accent should be the furthest thing from your mind. Instead, the accents were inconsistent and all over the place. This greatly distracted from the rest of the production. I would say the actress that played Miss Bingley was by far the worst. She seemed incredibly unsuitable for even being on a stage. Another casting choice that I was confused over was the actress who played Elizabeth. As the main character, her strength and independent character should carry and catalyze the entire performance. When onstage though, Elizabeth was awkward and an odd choice overall. The better performances of the afternoon came from Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Bennet, and Jane. Mrs. and Mr. Bennet complimented each other quite well with Mrs. Bennet’s boisterous and overbearing nature portrayed to the tee. The actress who played Jane was just the soft-spoken and feminine character I had imagined. Though she and Mr. Bingley did not have the greatest chemistry onstage, I thought that her overall performance was one of the truest in the show. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy did have good chemistry, though it was somewhat blighted by Elizabeth’s poor performance. As I said earlier, there was nothing remarkable or too memorable about the performance. I find that stories always lose a certain quality when it is taken from the context of a novel and transformed into a film and eventually into a play. It is inevitable that some of what made it so amazing in the first place will be lost along the way.