There doesn't seem to be a great need for another new stage version of Jane Austin's most beloved novel, but Geva's Pride and Prejudice is a handsome, well-produced and smartly repackaged one, and Austen's period romances seem to be oddly in vogue now that they seem entirely foreign to our society. They are, of course, women's novels, entirely concerned with who should marry whom and what each should wear and the glories of moving up in a rigidly class-conscious society. And there is a bit of formula in all these more-intelligent-than-the-rest heroines who are headstrong in their insistence on disastrously wrong choices of males to admire but charming in their admission that they made a terrible mistake and are up for a personal happy ending.
Geva's literary manager Marge Betley and artistic director Mark Cuddy have crafted a fairly trim script that plays well without seeming to be truncated, amazingly avoids the narrative device of the novel without loss of clarity, and speaks effectively to a broad contemporary audience without losing the sense of period so essential to Austen's story. I like it at least as much as any other treatment I've seen. The problems lie in the stage production, specifically in Cuddy's direction.
G. W. Mercier's designs are, at times, dark for a romantic comedy, but handsome; and his use of moving panels and wide-ranging projections and videos create cinematic-seeming movement and a huge range of scenes. The large cast is talented, does considerable justice to Austin's luminous, witty dialogue, and is able to bring all these varied characters to life, but occasionally needs to be reined in. Austin is not above satirical characterization, but she doesn't really indulge in vulgar caricature.
Although Peggy Cosgrove gets Mrs. Bennet's lovable ambitions for her daughters and annoying excesses in language and behavior which turn off the family's more aristocratic visitors, Cuddy permits her to play so broadly and with such insistent lack of variety that she seems more cartoon than character. Similarly, every reader knows that Reverend Collins is a fool; many commentators on the novel have described him as a "pompous buffoon"; but he too is a person, not an animated bad joke. His pretentious patroness (here played with perfectly natural hauteur by Carole Monferdini in a deliciously characterizing hat) would have verbally slapped him down and perhaps dismissed him had Collins carried on as Cuddy lets actor Randy Rollison behave. Compared to Rollison's mugging, silly posture, walk, and delivery, the Three Stooges would look more dignified than the late John Houseman doing his haughty professor bit.
Otherwise, the cast is a pleasure (and I'm not sure that Cosgrove or Rollison are at fault as much as Cuddy). Guy Paul is dry and tolerant as Mr. Bennet; Alyssa Rae is certainly beautiful and appealing as the pretty Jane; and the other daughters seem scaled appropriately in age, looks, and temperament. William Connell is convincingly likable as the untrustworthy Mr. Wickham, while subtly suggesting that he is otherwise beneath the surface. I thought Adam Green too nerdy as the nice, malleable Mr. Bingley. Robert Rutland is an especially dignified Uncle Gardiner. And the lead romantic duo, Meghan Wolf as Lizzy and David Christopher Wells as Mr. Darcy, play their evolving love story with great charm and appeal, despite Elizabeth's having to express attraction to Darcy only after getting ecstatic over his gorgeously impressive mansion and Darcy's having to restrict his ardor to bending a bit from some of the stiffest dialogue ever written for a young man.
I was particularly taken with the ways in which Robert Wierzel's lighting dressed up the stage, the action, and the characters while contributing its own story-telling gifts.
