Pride & Prejudice Archives - North West End UK

24Sep

By Jackie FoottitNo Comments

Yorkshire & Humber

Pride & Prejudice – Hull Truck Theatre

On Tuesday evening, make-up intact, I took my front row seat at the Hull Truck Theatre to watch a performance of Pride & Prejudice. Nearly three hours later, at the show’s end, I had acquired panda eyes and could have kicked myself for not wearing waterproof mascara. The person responsible for my facial demise? Ben Fensome. In this Jane Austin classic, made extra famous by the TV series starring Colin Firth (who could forget that wet shirt scene), Fensome has a dual role - that of dashing soldier Mr Wickham and ingratiating clergyman, Mr Collins. It’s his portrayal of the latter that caused my tears of mirth. Tall and slim, every move he made in his all-black apparel had the audience in stitches. But it was his rubbery facial expressions that did the damage to my face. Y...

Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) – The Lowry

After its 2018 debut at The Tron, Glasgow, Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) enjoyed a stint in the West End as well as a nationwide tour. With ballgown and boombox at the ready, this musical medley of classic meets comedy ventures out to entertain once more. This irreverent adaptation of the Austen novel is delivered by 5 actors soon to portray servants in a “proper” performance of it: think play-within-a-yet-to-start-play. They are tired of being the unsung heroes and so take on the leading roles in their own loud, rough and ready interpretation. Unwavering passion from an all-female troupe ensures that the utmost humour is squeezed out of every interaction, every song, every gesture. Emma Creaner delights as a pompously charismatic Charles Bingley, later slaying the audience as hi...

Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of) – Royal Lyceum Theatre

For anyone who battled through Jane Austen’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ at school - or university - this play is for YOU. If you spent those hours-you’ll-never-get-back watching one of the film or TV adaptations, hurling abuse and shouting increasingly colourful language into the mouths of the characters, this script is for YOU. To witness this irritating novel set about with such irreverent relish was a filthy pleasure. Never mind what legions of readers and viewers have wanted to tell Lady Catherine De Bourgh to do, this play - via The Best Ever Mr Darcy - finally does it. How? First off, we’re introduced, not to Mr and Mrs Bennet, but to six of Longbourn’s servants clad in white utility smocks and DM’s (Dear Young Team, that’s a brand of footwear, not a form of soshal meeja); the sto...