Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Jan 14 – Feb 8, 2025
Playwright: Kate Hamill (adapted from the Jane Austen novel)
Director: Emma Canalese
Cast: Victoria Abbott, Steve Corner, AJ Evans, Lucy Lock, Mym Kwa, Abbey Morgan, Dylan O’Connor, Idam Sondhi
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
It is the old story of how Elizabeth and Darcy fell in love, but this time in an adaptation two centuries after Jane Austen’s original. Kate Hamill’s sassy but faithful take on Pride and Prejudice provides a tonal update, allowing the novel to play to contemporary audiences seeking a revisit of the traditional romance.

Direction by Emma Canalese intends to deliver a farcical perspective of Pride and Prejudice, but what audiences find is something frightfully immature and painfully unfunny, with a cast that seems completely incapable of agreeing on a definitive style of presentation. Some approach their roles with banal naturalism, and others bring grating hyperbole, in a show that achieves not a moment of harmony. Design elements are individually adequate but when combined, form a staging that proves hard on the eyes.

The reverence surrounding classics like those by Austen, can become so consecrated that the idea of gheretics choosing to interrogate them can feel deeply appealing. Trying to deconstruct the work of artistic giants however, is clearly a formidable task that few can accomplish. Poor efforts exist however, to remind us that while there should be things regarded sacred, they should at the same time be available for reinvention, even if to demonstrate the endurance of those icons.

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