On Thursday, Nov. 2, students in the AP English and Symposium classes traveled to the Hartford Stage to watch “Pride and Prejudice.” The show was an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel by the same name, which students had been reading over several weeks. Since the novel was written in the 18th century, the play had been modernized in an attempt to satisfy a younger audience, and thus diverged quite a bit from the original novel. Although it had good intentions, the play went overboard with the modernization and ended up being more unsettling than intriguing.
The play was too dramatic with many of the characters’ personalities. An example of this is the character Mary, who shrieks and makes disturbing noises throughout the play. In the book, although we see how she may be unique and not as conventionally appealing as her other siblings, Austen does not depict her in such a horrible way as was reflected by the show. A simple personality difference would have worked in this case, but the yelling was too much. Another character even acted like a dog, carrying a ball in his mouth during the performance, which was strange and unnecessary. Mr. Collins also acted extremely sassy and used modern phrases to try and capture students’ attention.
During a party scene in the play, the daughters started shaking their backs at the audience. This was inherently inappropriate and overdone. It was not needed in the show. Although it was meant to try and grab viewers’ attention, the play is representative of the novel, and I felt it disrespected the author and those who lived in that time period. This scene was not educational nor helpful to the plot, and it was honestly uncomfortable to watch.
Almost all of the characters had to play more than one role, with one actor even taking on three large roles. Having such a small cast made the play confusing. The character who played Mr. Bennet also played Charlotte, which was odd, considering how different the characters were. Since the characters were so prominent in the novel and play, the play would have benefited from a larger cast. However, it was impressive how easily each actor was able to switch characters, with their distinct personalities and voices. This reflected their true ability to memorize many lines and be on stage for an extended time.
The play was a decent change from reading the book, and it was adequate to get a visual perspective of the plot. The actors were extremely talented, but the rewrite of the book could have been more satisfactory. The play was unexpected due to its modern attributes and drastic differences from the book. Overall, this unexpected adaptation was too modernized and overdone to the point where it was uncomfortable to watch.
