Mr Bennet’s Bride
by Emma Wood. Newcastle Theatre Company directed by Julie Black. Set
design by Robyn Greenwell; lighting design by Stewart MacGowan and Jenny
Brook; costumes designed by Julie Black; wig design by Valmai Drury.
At Canberra Repertory’s Theatre 3, April 11 – 12, 2015.
Reviewed by
Frank McKone
April 11
Newcastle Theatre Company is a pro-am community theatre with a similar history to Canberra Rep. [
http://www.newcastletheatrecompany.com/aboutus.htm] The presentation of this play, inspired by the characters of Mr and Mrs Bennet from Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice,
seems perfectly appropriate in this milieu, where the up-and-coming
middle class – academics, public servants and lawyers – take on the
trappings of upper class traditions.
Emma Woods (her
own parents having given her such a significant name) has captured the
essence of Jane Austen’s sensibility in imagining that Mrs Bennet’s name
was Emily and that her father was George Gardiner, the lawyer employed
by Mr Bennet’s father, Robert. Perhaps the quote from
Pride and Prejudice which would stir up the mystery of Mr Bennet junior (named James in the play) is at the end of Chaper One:
Mr.
Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve,
and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been
insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was
less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little
information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she
fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her
daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
How
on earth did ‘James’ Bennet, with the name of kings appropriate to his
wealth and station as landed gentry, become married to ‘Emily’ of
middle-class pretensions? At least he managed to have four of his
daughters given the right queenly names – Jane, Elizabeth, Mary and
Catherine. But Lydia! My goodness!
While watching
Woods’ play, the question in my mind was how true the characters of
James and Emily appeared as their 23-years-younger selves.
I
think most of us think of Mr Bennet as genuinely sensible, even wise,
and with a quiet ironic sense of humour which we see in his counselling
Jane and Elizabeth and his concern about Lydia. We certainly see Mrs
Bennet as so motivated to be upwardly mobile that she fails entirely to
have regard for her daughters’ personal development (to use a modern
term). How do these thoughts match the quote above?
Austen’s
writing puts us subtley into seeing things from unexpected
perspectives. The first sentence in the quote is the view of Mrs Bennet
about her husband. The rest is Mr Bennet’s view of his wife.
The story in
Mr Bennet’s Bride
of how Robert Bennet put his son into such a position that James ended
up having to marry in the hope of producing an heir to keep the property
in the Bennet family’s possession – and how it was his employee’s
lower-class daughter that became the only option – makes very good
sense. For readers of
Pride and Prejudice it’s even more
delicious to realise that James’ marriage to Emily produces only five
daughters and no son. So the property will go to cousin Benedict
Collins’ newly-born son (at the time of the Bennet’s wedding) – the
awful William Collins, who tries to marry Jane, then Elizabeth, but ends
up having to marry the lower-class friend of Elizabeth, Charlotte
Lucas.
For readers with an interest in economics and
the politics of earned income as against inherited wealth, from the 18th
Century onwards, the book you must read is
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
by the French economist Professor Thomas Piketty, expertly translated
into English by Arthur Goldhammer. He uses Balzac and Austen as very
effective observers of the social classes of their day.
But
now to the production of Woods’ play. I have a concern about the
characterisation of James Bennet. Of course, the play needs to be comic
in parts to match the satirical elements of the novel, but the costume
and manner of James’ role is used in the play to go too close to farce.
It should be funny when he is discovered at the beginning asleep on the
floor with ‘a book fallen askew where he has been reading’, but to
dress him and play him as a kind of buffoon is not right. It is true,
as Austen wrote from the point of view of ‘Emily’ 23 years later, that
she could not understand her husband’s ‘quick parts, sarcastic humour,
reserve, and caprice’. At the age of 29, as ‘James’ confronts his
father, these characteristics should be played with much more incisive
depth of feeling than I saw last night.
For example there is something close to vindictiveness in James’ saying:
Perhaps I am so happy to be still living at home with you, Father?
which came over merely as playing word-games for a laugh (from us, of
course, not from his Father), when we should have heard the dark edge of
attack that would have stopped our laugh promptly as we realised the
intensity of his feelings. Then we could accept more easily how
Robert’s sister Mary helps him to see that he has damaged James, and
when we find out the story of James’ mother’s death in childbirth, we
can have real sympathy for Robert and for James. And we would also
recognise James’ anguish as he realises at the wedding the limited
nature of the wife he could not get out of marrying, however ‘pretty’
she is.
Then we can see why, 23 years later, his wife
cannot understand him, but he understands her and knows he must treat
his daughters with humour, care and concern – as he had been treated by
his aunt Mary in place of his dead mother.
My example
is only one of many during Act 1. In Act 2 James appeared almost a
different man, but the setting him up beforehand as a comic farce
character prevented us seeing the development of his character in a
serious way.
I think the script is not the problem
here. It’s a matter of interpretation. Jane Austen’s comedy is
serious; this production of Woods’ play doesn’t come up to that mark.
But it is still well worthwhile seeing as a stand-alone comedy of 18th
Century manners and as a cleverly written lead-in (or rather as a
post-prequel) to discussion of
Pride and Prejudice.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
