Some creative works come with their observations, wit, humor, characterization, romance, and theme so effectively built-in, they are complete unto themselves. They don’t need tinkering.
Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” is one of them. From its glorious first sentence, sardonically presenting a “well-known fact” that a rich, single man moving into a vicinity must be in need of a wife, it sails flawlessly through clever complications to its perfectly considered ending.
All a theater company dramatizing Austen’s novel has to do is follow the author’s lead, including her tone, which is subtle and woven into the fabric of her narrative, therefore providing its full, catty bite.
Subtlety and natural flow are totally missing in Eliana Cohen-Orth’s production of “Pride and Prejudice,” as scripted by Kate Hamill, at Princeton Summer Theater.
Rather than settle for Austen’s stinging charm and sharp nuances, Cohen-Orth goes for the throat with broad, exaggerated comic touches that turn this “Pride and Prejudice” into a farce.
The basic story comes through. Skillful performers, such as Chloe Webster and Katie Hameetman, playing multiple roles as most in the PST cast do, figure out how to marry Cohen-Orth’s buffoonery with Austen’s cues about character and mannerisms. Enduring constant, random hijinks is possible, but the art of “Pride and Prejudice,” the qualities that make it a welcome and lasting staple of English and world literature, is entirely absent. Austen’s style too often gives way to Moe, Larry, and Curly’s.
No one is looking for a stodgy, formal rendition of “Pride and Prejudice.” Austen’s artistry doesn’t deserve that, either. Cohen-Orth goes so far towards travesty, Austen’s handiwork is frequently exploded. You sit waiting for the moments that register more cleanly and directly, such as a scene in which the focal character, Elizabeth Bennet (Paige Allen) and her friend Charlotte Lucas (Webster) share their ideas about romance and marriage.
Kate Hamill is largely absolved for the mayhem Cohen-Orth puts on stage. Her script is mostly faithful to Austen. Hamill takes liberties such as eliminating one of the five Bennet daughters, turning another from a mousy bookworm to a neurotic hypochondriac, and occasionally changing the story for theatrical convenience. Listening to the dialogue separate from Cohen-Orth’s embellishments, you’ll notice several lines and even more sentiments directly from the novel and see some characters, particularly the daughters’ father, Mr. Bennet (Webster again!), that gibe closer than others to what I consider Austen’s intention.
Two ideas seem to inform Cohen-Orth’s ideas for this production. The overriding one involves games. Maybe the director took this notion from Hamill’s script because I never noticed so many references to games, as in love and social mobility being games, in Austen’s text. (I’m inclined to go back for a dozenth or so reread.)
Games pervade the Hamilton Murray Theater stage. Jeffrey Van Velsor’s set, the wittiest element in this production, is handsomely draped and furnished while being punctuated with strategically, symmetrically spaced toy boxes that give the impression of being antique and have several dolls and other playthings, decidedly antique, on top of them.
These boxes and toys turn the comfortable Bennet parlor into a nursery play room. Elizabeth and her sisters are constantly picking up dolls and fussing with their hair, attempting to balance a tethered ball on a wooden peg, which none of the cast manages to do, and bouncing balls for no apparent reason.
This overuse of games within the storytelling is no doubt meant to be an enhancement, a way to expand the production and help it to be more theatrical than literary.
Here, that conception backfires. Beyond a draping of a doll or a game of strings Elizabeth and her sister Jane (Kate Short) play while having a more poignant conversation, all the toy sequences become extraneous and interrupting.
“Extraneous” and “interrupting” also denote the broad style Cohen-Orth imposes on the cast. No one, not even the clever Webster or the obviously intelligent Allen, who shows potential to be an excellent Elizabeth Bennett, escapes looking outlandish rather than defining or clarifying.
The other theme on which Cohen-Orth concentrates is the course of true love, which takes many twists in “Pride and Prejudice.” Hearing Paige Allen discuss love in moments in which she’s shenanigan-free, you glimpse what this production could do honor to Austen. You also see, sans overzealous staging, the bond that Jane Bennet (played by Kate Short) and Mr. Bingley (Katie Hameetman) form and the mismatch between Charlotte Lucas and the fatuous Mr. Collins (performed by Emmie Collins).
Of all the performers, Chloe Webster surmounts Cohen-Orth’s obstacles most resourcefully. She finds way to appear genuine and human, primarily by concentrating on Hamill’s text and simplifying the comic aspects of her characters to only what is needed.
Webster is funny and true to Austen in her portrayal of the amused, sarcastic, and ultimately apologetic Mr. Bennet. She deftly anchors any scene in which Mr. Bennet has control, economically revealing all of his droll cantankerousness and his sense of fatherly responsibility.
Webster is lucky that her other character, Charlotte Lucas, is all reason and practicality and is without the type of comic traits that lend themselves to slapstick. The laughs Webster elicits come honestly from Charlotte’s exasperation with Mr. Collins, whom she married with an eye to future security and to avoid, at age 27, becoming an old maid.
Paige Allen often pulls off the same magic as Elizabeth. She comes across as being as smart and observant as the character. The trouble is as a lead, she is the one most influenced by Cohen-Orth’s direction. And early on, she is involved in stage business that would make the novel’s Elizabeth Bennet cringe.
When allowed, Allen takes charge of scenes the way Webster does. Some of her scenes with her love interest, Mr. Darcy (Malachi Benjamin), are weak because the bond looks comme il faut instead of magnetic or passionate. In general, Allen does Elizabeth credit and finds a way to be truer to Austen than the director.
Kate Short shows proper decorum and romantic excitement as Jane Bennet. She also captures the hauteur and spitefulness of Anne DeBurgh.
Katie Hameetman often avoids the farcical tone by making Mr. Bingley happy-go-lucky and truly in love with Jane instead of gawky or silly. She is also genuinely funny as Mary Bennet.
Emmie Collins is the cast member who revels the most in Cohen-Orth’s excesses. Although Collins overdoes three roles, the takes on Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham entertain anyhow.
And Kelly Brosnan and Nicabec Casido appear to be the most influenced by the director’s approach, although Brosnan does redeem herself a bit as the imperious Lady Catherine DeBurgh.
Malachi Benjamin blessedly avoids farce as Darcy. He is solid in the role but doesn’t quite provide the weight to make the scenes with Darcy and Elizabeth more than plot development.
Clara Bloom’s costumes, built from layering foundation garments, need more imagination. Sound designer Minjae Kim does a laudatory job incorporating a third Cohen-Orth theme, bells. Angelica Qin does well with the lighting.
Pride and Prejudice, Princeton Summer Theater, Hamilton Murray Theater, McCosh Walk, Princeton University. Through Sunday, July 2, Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m. $30 matinees and $35 evenings. www.princetonsummertheater.org.
