On Stage: “Pride & Prejudice, Part 2”
Photos: Carol Rosegg
Pride & Prejudice, Part 2
Under Mark Shanahan’s astute leadership, Westport Country Playhouse launches its 96th season with the world premiere of playwright Ken Ludwig’s imaginative new comedy “Pride & Prejudice, Part 2: Napoleon at Pemberley.”
Jane Austen aficionados will immediately recognize adventurous Elizabeth Bennet (Delphi Borish), now married to uptight Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Tony Roach) and living somewhat sedately at his family’s isolated country estate called Pemberley.
Suddenly their placid existence is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of General Napoleon Bonaparte (Reg Rogers), France’s petulant deposed Emperor, en route to imprisonment in exile on the remote island of Elba. He’s traveling incognito, accompanied by his aide, Lieutenant Melville (Mathias Goldstein).
Chaos ensues as Elizabeth’s widowed sister Lydia (Lucy Austin) appears, along with romantic intrigue ignited by Darcy’s meddling aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Kristine Nielsen, familiar as Mrs. Bauer, the cook on HBO’s “The Gilded Age”), her ‘eligible’ daughter Anne (Allison Wick) and a preacher (Carson Elrod).
They’re duly introduced in the over-long first act — which needs trimming before this deliciously delightful farce can go further — but all is redeemed in the hilarious, fast-paced second act which evokes memories of “Murder on the Orient Express,” a previous collaboration of playwright Ken Ludwig, director Emily Mann and set designer Beowulf Boritt.
Jane Austen’s relatable 19th century Regency characters are having a renaissance, coinciding with Austen’s 250th birthday last December. Just last week, I reviewed a spin-off, “The Other Bennet Sister,” streaming on the BBC and BritBox, and now there’s Georgia Oakley’s new movie adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility.”
While Jane Austen was not a dramatist, her dryly insightful social satire lends itself to dramatization because she writes such witty, pithy dialogue, engagingly augmented, here, by Ken Ludwig (“Lend Me a Tenor,” “Crazy For You,” “Moon Over Buffalo,” “Death on the Nile”), whose humorous work often encompasses renewed romances and other relevant relationships.
Combining love and laughter, “Pride & Prejudice, Part 2: Napoleon at Pemberley” is at the Westport Country Playhouse through November 7. For more information, go to westportplayhouse.org.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.