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NORFOLK — Like its beloved source novel, this stage adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” is a kind of “Much Ado about Mating,” its plot centered on finding suitable husbands for the Bennet family of marriageable girls.
It’s just that this time, its wry opening line — “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” — is delivered more “Austentaciously,” by a Black Elizabeth Bennet (Leda Douglas, doubling as narrator), in a raucous new version by Aquila Theatre.
New York-based Aquila (”eagle” in Latin) swooped in Thursday, landing at the Attucks Theatre for two student matinees and an evening performance, making its second yearly stop courtesy of the Virginia Arts Festival. Just as last year’s offering featured an actor of color in a traditionally white lead role (a Black Jay Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby”), so this year’s Elizabeth, as well as her flighty younger sister Lydia (Canadian Elizabeth Belfast), were given lively performances by women of color.
The freshening effects of what was once called “color-blind casting,” and now goes by “color brave” or “color conscious,” are obvious and immediate, creating what one might call a retro-progressive look back at the late 18th and early 19th centuries. (“Pride and Prejudice” was published in 1813.) It’s a past that clearly wasn’t this way but perhaps could have been had the world not gone so far astray with the aberrant, abhorrent Atlantic slave trade.
Call it an alternate reality, call it what you will, but more people are accepting and liking the practice of inserting non-white characters into previously all-white history and texts. This is, in part, thanks to the success of TV’s “Bridgerton,” based on contemporary but historically set romances by Julia Quinn, and the quasi-Austenian “Sanditon,” based on the last, unfinished Jane Austen work. Both “Bridgerton” and “Sanditon” are unabashed bodice-ripper romances, featuring handsome, clever, rich and even aristocratic characters of color. Aquila’s “Pride and Prejudice,” while a bit manic in its pursuit of slapstick laughs, uses its six actors (one-third of color) to create 15 or so characters fairly true to Austen’s intent, making it worth the evening’s wild ride.
Directed by company director Desiree Sanchez, and adapted by the actors themselves, any version of P&P for stage, film or TV, is, of necessity, really a “greatest hits” version of its lengthy three-volume novel source. (Aquila eliminates poor Kitty, the youngest Bennet daughter, altogether!)
The stage was a typically sparse Aquila set — two sort-of Regency chairs, a table and two tall windows fixed atop rolling bench/cabinet affairs (later used for silly rolling shenanigans). As noted last year, Aquila has gone wholesale into projecting set backgrounds, be it the proud (P&P) peacock we have at the start or a projected mansion and grounds to later represent Pemberly, the fabulous estate of Darcy (Conner Keef). Carriage rides through the English countryside get moving picture projections, accompanied by actors mimicking the jolt of bumps.
Body language is, in fact, a strong point in this whole production.
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Douglas’ less-than-ladylike movements (feet up on furniture, dress askew) show that she’s a daddy’s girl, unconsciously echoing his same onstage posture. Mr. Bennet is — irony likely intended — played by Keef, who plays Darcy, Elizabeth’s eventual love interest. Mrs. Bennet (the polar opposite of her studious husband) is done nearly full-out, drag-style by actor James Lavender, who doubles as an equally outlandish and comic Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy’s snooty aunt.
James Counihan will also bend gender to render Elizabeth’s “unattractive” bookish younger sister Mary. That’s when he’s not busy playing all of the Bennet sisters’ suitors except Darcy. Those suitors are Mr. Bingley (who will eventually hook up with the beautiful, kind, oldest sister, Jane, played by Katie Housley); the loathsome, sycophantic, pelvis-forward minister Mr. Collins (who unsuccessfully hits on Elizabeth but marries her poor BFF Charlotte, also played by Belfast); and the execrable Lt. Wickham, who chases underage girls such as Darcy’s innocent sister, Georgiana (also Belfast).
Wickham is prevented from despoiling Georgiana by her gallant brother but successfully elopes (and is “persuaded” to marry) Elizabeth’s youngest (in this Kitty-less adaptation) sister, Lydia (Belfast, again). If all this double, triple and even quadruple casting sounds confusing, it is and was. Belfast is particularly hard put to keep her three characters clearly distinguishable. Shifts in hairstyle help, but don’t suffice.
Counihan is somewhat helped by noticeable costume changes — yucky Wickham, for example, wears an unmistakable redcoat uniform. Counihan’s quick changes become so frequent and frenetic, he eventually starts executing them onstage, much to the audience’s delight. Lavender, likewise, lets the “female” voice he uses as Mrs. Bennet accidentally-on-purpose slip into basso profundo toward the madcap ending.
Still, the center of the story must be Elizabeth and Darcy’s erratic, then erotic, relationship, and that center does indeed hold, thanks to Keef’s bodily restrained performance as Darcy and to Douglas’ Elizabeth. Elizabeth takes nothing off of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy’s meddling aunt who seeks to thwart their love. Says Elizabeth, “He is a gentleman and I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.” It may not have been so, but it should have been. The whole push to marry off the Bennet sisters is itself impelled by an unjust, misogynistic law: entailment. It stated that only male heirs could inherit certain property, such as the Bennet family’s home. (“Downton Abbey” fans will remember it from that show.)
While color-conscious casting cannot undo past unfair laws and injustices, it can help improve the future by imaginatively righting the past. That’s why this show, in its quieter moments, well fits Aquila’s mission to “enhance the plurality of our perspectives.” When audiences are made proud and a little less prejudiced, that mission is Austentaciously accomplished.
Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.