| Jane Austen Makes a Match is a new play by award-winning playwright Joanna Norland which explores the interplay between Jane Austen's life and work,
while probing the crackling relationship between the author and her best-loved heroine, Elizabeth Bennet. Heady with her first taste of love, Jane Austen
creates the feisty Elizabeth in an exuberant moment of inspiration. But when her own romance sours, Jane Austen resolves to sentence both herself and her
alter ego to passionless, pragmatic marriages. With the fates of heroine, novel and author all in doubt, only Elizabeth Bennet can save the day.
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| Review
This lively and engaging play enjoyed its world première on the opening weekend of this year's Jane Austen Festival in Bath. Written by award-winning
playwright Joanna Norland and directed by Carol Hall, the play successfully fuses aspects of Jane Austen’s real life - her romance with Tom Lefroy and
marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither - with the creation of her best-loved novel, Pride and Prejudice. Four members of the cast of six take on multiple
roles to achieve this, and they do so admirably. What looked confusing upon first glance at the programme, works surprisingly well, and the mix of characters -
some real-life, some fictional - are clearly and convincingly portrayed by the small band of actors. With a minimalist set, everything rests on the actors and
they certainly all deliver excellent performances. This is all the more impressive, given the limited rehearsal time (over a number of weekends) in which they
had to prepare, and the audience easily overlooked the few stumbles they made on what was, after all, the opening night of the play's run.
Simon Balcon has the daunting task of playing Jane Austen's first, and possibly only, true love, Tom Lefroy, together with perhaps every woman's ideal man, Fitzwilliam Darcy.
He portrays the first sympathetically, and you get a real sense of the dilemma Tom faced between either courting Jane or following his family’s wishes for his future.
Meanwhile, his Darcy is suitably proud and imposing but also, in later scenes, manages to show his warmth and depth of feeling towards Elizabeth well. James Kleinmann
clearly relishes his contrasting roles as the easy-going and charming Mr Bingley, the insufferable Mr Collins, and the adorable, eager-to-please young pup, Harris Bigg-Withers.
The three very different men are all conveyed through changes in posture, mannerisms and speech, and James switches effortlessly from one to the other and back again throughout
the course of the play. Likewise, Suzanne Tooney’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh very convincingly dominates and terrifies us every time she appears on stage and, at times,
it's a relief to see her manifest herself as the slightly less forbidding Madame Lefroy, and very sweet Alethea Lefroy, Tom’s doting sister and Jane and Cassandra’s affectionate
friend. Nicola Borthwick mischievously brings Mrs Austen to life and gives us a wonderful impression of where Jane might have got the inspiration for Mrs Bennet. She also
fleshes out the shadowy figure that was Jane’s supportive sister and confidante, Cassandra.
As for our heroines, it's never easy to portray women as well-loved and admired as Jane Austen and Elizabeth Bennet, but Clare Cameron and Kerry Steed respectively deliver
vibrant and energetic performances that bring them brilliantly to life. They work particularly well together on stage, and it is fascinating to watch the interaction between
the two, particularly in the second act where Lizzie is effectively battling to save herself and ensure that Jane Austen takes up writing again. The two actresses complement
each other so well that the audience can very easily imagine that Lizzie was borne out of the lively, confident heroine which Jane Austen longed to be in real life but, due to
family circumstances and the society of the time, could not be.
This highly enjoyable production is lively, humorous and entertaining, while still being respectful to the original material taken from Pride and Prejudice, and the life of its
author, Jane Austen. It is well worth the effort to see the play during its tour over the coming weeks.
Kathryn Eastman
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