This month marks Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, which means there have been almost two centuries of adaptations of beloved novels that either make her readers upset or make them swoon. The Company Theatre gets it right. Their fresh and faithful theatrical adaptation of her final novel “Persuasion” plays in their new home on 28 Lawn St. through December 21.
The show opens with Anne Elliot (played by Abigail Rice) bowing to the audience and stepping onto a turntable to play a (prop) pianoforte. She does her best, albeit with a few wrong notes. While she plays, other characters enter and rotate the turntable, choosing what direction she faces.
As this clever vignette reveals, Anne is a far cry from the opinionated Lizzie Bennet, the protagonist of Austen’s more well-known “Pride and Prejudice.” She is quiet, polite and easily persuaded. Rice admirably captures Anne’s passive nature while still making her engaging and sympathetic. When she breaks the fourth wall to narrate her story, she does so in third person.
In the same way “Pride and Prejudice” is the quintessential enemies-to-lovers romance, “Persuasion” sets the template for the second chance romance trope. Eight-and-a-half years ago, Anne was persuaded by her mother figure Lady Russell (a self-assured Sammi Cohen) to decline the love of her life, sailor Frederick Wentworth (a brooding Caitlin Kenyon). When her financially foolish father (a delightful Vicki Casarett) must rent out his property to cover expenses, the first tenant is Wentworth’s sister, bringing the formerly thwarted lovers back into each other’s orbits.
While there’s little doubt which couple you’re meant to root for, complications arise with a choice of potential matches. Everyone expects Wentworth to marry one of the Musgrove sisters, Louisa (a graceful Juliet Besch-Turner) or Henrietta (an excitable Campbell McDade Clay, who also plays a hilariously melodramatic Mrs. Smith). Anne, meanwhile, bonds with the poetry-loving Captain Benwick (a melancholy Kiki Collins) and captures the attention of her cousin, Mr. Elliot (the polished and prepared understudy Liz Preston).
It’s no easy feat to condense a story with 15 characters and unexpected side plots into a well-paced, engaging two hour play, but director Carl Del Buono’s new adaptation does an impressive job of making the novel accessible and palatable for a wide audience. It offers a lighter touch than the 2007 BBC version, without the forced contemporary aesthetic of the 2022 Netflix adaptation.
Carl Del Buono’s signature “the classics, but with vibes” directorial style meshes well with Austen’s tongue-in-cheek wit and swoony swells of emotion. This is a world where the lives of women are consumed by their home life and social obligations; where a brushing of hands or offer to share an umbrella can be an emotional earthquake. While there’s room for more dialogue between Anne and Wentworth, both Rice and Kenyon fill in the blanks of their courtship with their (respectively speaking) longing looks and scowls, and the happy ending is as satisfying as it should be.
If there’s a “twist” to this production, it’s the all-femme cast. Such a choice runs the risk of feeling gimmicky or pandering, but here it’s almost unnoticeable. The women actors clearly play men characters, wearing breeches, boots and spot-on hairstyles. Every cast member is so perfectly suited to her role that no thematic justification for the gender-bent casting is needed (which is good, because the text itself offers little). It’s easy to believe no man who auditioned could capture Captain Wentworth’s commanding but kind stature as effortlessly as Caitlin Kenyon, or be so comedically self-important of a Sir Walter as Vicki Casarett.
The ensemble roles are equally well cast, from the cuttingly-cruel-served-with-a-smile Jael Lopez as the eldest sister Elizabeth to a wry Meredith Utman as Admiral Croft. Particularly well-suited to her role is Fiona Criddle as Anne’s younger sister Mary, the overdramatic hypochondriac who is annoying in all the best ways. The cast is rounded out with Lauren MacDonough as Mrs. Croft and Briar-Rose Murphy as Charles Musgrove.
The costume design (Carl and Kendall Del Buono, with consultancy by Lisa Brown) is attractive and serviceable, featuring Austen-esque period dress punctuated with spencers and reticules. The set is both grand and simple, a semi-circle of pillars furnished with brown chairs and potted plants. The actors make great use of the stairs and the platform levels. The lighting helps clarify the transitions between scenes and narrative introspection.
The only false note (pun intended) is the overuse of background music. The underscoring features a mix of baroque piano and strings, and instrumental excerpts from “wait, what song is this?” pop-rock tunes from the likes of Tori Amos and Billy Joel. It plays almost nonstop through the play, at times distracting from the actor’s language, even with their strong projection and enunciation.
This occasional aural distraction does not deter from the overall joy and humor of the production, however. Like Shakespeare, Austen’s stature in English literature can make people falsely assume her works are intimidating or stuffy. In reality, her novels are laugh-out-loud funny. This production does her justice. Diehard Austen fans and newbies willing to be converted hopefully won’t need too much persuasion to check this production out.
“Persuasion” runs through December 21. For tickets and showtimes, visit here.
