Jane Austen was cuttingly succinct in her characterization of Mrs. Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” describing her as “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.” Throughout the novel, Mrs. Bennet remains fussily, infuriatingly laser-focused on plotting to advance her daughters’ marital possibilities to ensure the Bennets’ future financial security.
In most screen adaptations, Mrs. Bennet’s wince-inducing meddling is played for laughs — and a distraction from the obstacle-strewn paths to coupled contentment for Lizzie and Mr. Darcy and for Jane and Mr. Bingley.
But in the funny and engaging production of Emily Breeze’s “Are the Bennet Girls OK?,” from the Bedlam theater company and briskly directed by Eric Tucker, Mrs. Bennet is the magnetically commanding anchor of the show. In her rich performance, Zuzanna Szadkowski makes us see the gritted desolation at the heart of Mrs. Bennet’s bustling desperation. (The production, now scheduled to run at West End Theater through Nov. 9, comes almost a decade after Bedlam’s acclaimed 2016 adaptation of Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.”)
The looming threat of Mr. Collins’s inheritance of the Bennet family home remains the engine driving Mrs. Bennet to marry off her second-eldest child, Lizzie (Elyse Steingold), to him. After Lizzie declines, the show focuses on her and her sisters’ awry romances and also the turmoil within a family facing an uncertain material future. The play’s profanity-laden conversations and emotional explosions flow from the pain and absurdities inherent in a social system of marriage, money and subservience that constrains women’s choices.
Austen’s opening sentence of the novel — “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” — has been meaningfully changed here, with Mrs. Bennet remarking, “Well, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a girl with a sister must be in want of another sister so they can complain about the first sister together, and each of my girls has four sisters so —.”
Moments later, she says of her daughters: “They roll their eyes at me. Do yours do that? Do they roll their eyes at you like you’re stupid and you’ve never done anything in your entire life?”
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Review: ‘Are the Bennet Girls OK?’ Well, Their Mother Is Magnificent. appeared first on New York Times.
