Emma – Rose Theatre
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. At least, Jane Austen’s Emma did.
Ava Pickett’s Emma has got issues. Handsome and clever but decidedly not rich, her father is a crook, her sister is a crackpot, and her own disposition is anything but happy. This Essex-set adaptation of the literary classic opens at Oxford’s May Ball and is throughout infused with the vaguely sickeningly hedonistic energy of that messy melee.
Blatantly dismissive of the traditional Regency aesthetic of horse-and-carriage romance, this production instead takes on the look and feel of a Piccadilly Circus rickshaw ca...