Jane Austen (1775-1897) is best known for her novels, which critique the British landed gentry of her day. Her two best-known works, Pride and Prejudice and Emma, have been made into movies and TV series over the years. But her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, gives insight into Austen’s voice and serves as a template for her later works.
An adaptation by Jessica Swale of Sense and Sensibility is now on view at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey in Madison. And while it has interesting moments of its own, it is in dire need of trimming to better hold a modern audience’s attention.
The Dashwood family — mother and three daughters — are left homeless upon the death of Mr. Dashwood. Their home has passed (under English law of the time) to the next male relative — John, Dashwood’s spineless son from a prior marriage. He is married to Fanny, a snobbish shrew.
The desperate family finds friends, Sir John Middleton and his gossipy mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings, who lend them a cottage. Mrs. Jennings, seeing that two of the daughters — sensible Elinor and emotional Marianne — are of marriageable age, goes to work to find them rich husbands from the local gentry. Marianne, introduced to both the dashing John Willoughby and the older but somewhat more sedate Colonel Brandon, chooses to pursue the former. Elinor, meanwhile, eases into a gentle affection with the shy Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s brother. But alas, the course of true love does not run smooth for either girl.
As directed by Nisi Sturgis, the cast seems trapped into registering high emotion by using their upper vocal ranges at the top of their lungs. False politeness is marked by a deadly precision in pronunciation instead of a natural flow that would allow for doubts in the speakers’ veracity.
The cast makes the best they can of the overlong play and the lackluster direction, many of them playing multiple roles and all of them playing man — and maid-servants when the need arises. Mandi Masden as Elinor provides a fine portrayal of a woman who has tamped down her emotions in dealing with her family’s problems, finally releasing them in a bitter second act torrent. Billie Wyatt, a favorite actress at the Shakespeare Theatre, allows Marianne to unleash her unbridled emotions, giving a mercurial portrayal leading to a fully believable evolution. As the third and youngest sister, 13 year old Margaret, Terra Chaney delightfully portrays the freedom of youth; her multiplicity of interests invokes feelings of having a wide, wonderful world to explore and all the time in the world to explore it. Chaney also adeptly plays a mean-girl heiress making nice to Elinor while pursuing Ferrars. Lynnette R. Freeman and Kayla Ryan Walsh, as Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, provide comic moments as two indiscreet, slightly dizzy women of a certain age and social standing.
As for the gentlemen, Christian Frost is all surface allure and slickness as Willoughby; Patrick Andrew Jones is shy to the point of indecisive muteness as Ferrars; Sean Mahan is the epitome of dogged devotion, hiding his own secret woes as Colonel Brandon; and Patrick Toon, another Shakespeare Theatre favorite, creates five individual characters, each with their own unique comic tics.
Sense and Sensibility, while possibly being a delight for Austen fans, comes in at slightly over three hours. It is an endurance test for those not already inclined to know or like the characters, the twists in the plot, or the mores of 18th Century British country society. This adaptation, which for now is a near miss, could be made better by cutting out some incidental characters who do not advance the plot and making it less talky and in places repetitive.
Still, the audience at the performance I attended seemed to enjoy Sense and Sensibility, and for those who appreciate the romance of an Austen novel mixed with humor, both verbal and physical, Sense and Sensibility would be a good choice for a fall evening.
Sense and Sensibility is presented by the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey at the F.M. Kirby Theatre on the campus of Drew University in Madison through Sept. 22, 2024. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to shakespearenj.org or call 973-408-5600.
