Not a Review: Sense and Sensibility

I recently got to see the Dallas Theater Center's production of Sense and Sensibility... 

Really enjoyed it.  I think it's a clever adaptation that - for once - catches the sometimes nasty edge of Jane Austen's humor and the real and frightening stakes involved with a young woman's reputation and future.  The Dashwood sisters live in terrifying times.  Marry or starve, basically.

Any of you who think Jane Austen is actually, you know, ROmantic, I advise you to read Robert Rodi's Bitch in a Bonnet and Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen immediately.  Sooner than that even.

I really did like this adaptation of S&S.  The general idea is that a Greek English chorus of nasty gossips shadowed and commented on the action, peering through windows and pushing characters around.  Cuts and simplifications to story, characters, and themes clarify the threat and strengthen the emphasis on gossip.  Some characters - like Mrs. Jennings who, in the book, has a good heart under her gossipy skin - became simple tattle-mongers.  (Not quite fair.)  In the program a comparison was made to today's ability to ruin a woman's reputation in minutes via Twitter and Facebook.

That's topical - just ask Monica Lewinsky.  In a series of entertaining webisodes called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, this ruining-her-reputation trope (this time from Pride and Prejudice) was translated for the modern day into the release of a sex tape online; in S&S days it sometimes took only writing a letter.

Reputation stuff still does damage.

I have to agree [sorta] with Mary Bennet, when she says: "...we may draw this useful lesson: that loss of [perceived] virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step [not necessarily her step, mind you] involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."

Tell'em sister!  Sometimes all it takes is breaking up with that "undeserving" dude...  "Revenge porn" they call it when he then puts all her sexts or too-personal photos etc online.  "Doxing" is when he - or other enemies - reveal all her personal information.  And though men also suffer from these shaming techniques, the victims are generally female.

So.

Topical.

Because I liked this production, I felt inevitably picky-picky about certain aspects: it's The Designer's Curse.  I'll ignore most of these as too picky to smudge an admirable production.  The set was simple and fitting.  (And, for the Theater Center amazingly! not extravagantly expensive.  Okay, picky, there had to be a better way to bring on London.  Sorry.)  The costumes good, especially the chorus, though there were a few choices I disagreed with.   (Col. Brandon's underwear?)   Lighting good (except that rain).  The acting was good (I'd change a little casting) with real stand-outs as Elinor and Edward, who made the show.

I don't know that this production will convert those who go into the theater thinking Jane Austen is either a) dull or b) mushily romantic... but it ought to.

Well done.

Less than a week to go, so get tickets!  HERE.

This'll Hold You...

I'm buried in Back-in-town-catch-up-work with a side order of Visitors, but while you're waiting for a new post from me, here's something addictive to keep you busy: that latest (to me anyway) entry in the competition to rewrite Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the Lizzie Bennet Video-Diaries.

Very funny retake on the classic story, with a clever spin on the Lydia scandal.

BTW  Just saw the film The End of the World at Dallas' spiffy new Alamo Drafthouse.  Fun.  Though I think I still prefer the film duo's previous Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Non-Theater Catch-Up

Inspite of my recent crazy-busy theater schedule, I have been able to read and watch a few other non-theater things:

I rewatched the film Cowboys and Aliens, which stands up well to a second viewing.  (Earlier POST.)

I also watched for the first time the art film Toast, based on an autobiographical novel by food writer Nigel Slater.  A young teen boy, a budding foody, lives in a household where dinner might be - seriously! - three cans heated in a pan of boiling water.  He loves his mother, but she can't cook.  After her death, his unsympathetic and bullying father hires a cleaner (played by Helena Bonham Carter)... who eventually becomes his hated stepmother.  But boy can she cook!

Enjoyed it.  Terrific performances all round and Bonham Carter is just mesmerizing.

On the book front, I finally finished Thinking Fast and Slow (earlier POST) which was fascinating and, I think, important.  It's written in layman's language (barring a few "heuristics" etc.) with the ideas presented from an economist's view (natural, what with that Nobel Prize), but if you can tease out smaller fragments from the dense argument, the facts of how humans make decisions are vitally important to anyone who wants to be persuasive: salesmen, artists, designers of all kinds, writers of prose or poetry... everyone basically.  Read!

As lighter fare, I started rereading the Chalionese series by Lois McMaster Bujold, starting with The Curse of Chalion, which features one of my all-time favorite heroes.  Also rereading an early Georgette Heyer, The Black Moth.  I'm enjoying it (and it's the only Heyer on my NOOK), but my real favorites are her later books like Frederica, Venetia, A Civil Contract, or Friday's Child whose paperback copies I've read to rags.  I'm not usually a ROmance reader, but Heyer is witty, frothy, and seriously researched.

Heyer, Austen, Wodehouse, and Pratchett - Public domain images messed with.

When life gets difficult or harried, Heyer's books are in my short stack of refreshing breaks, along with P. G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and Jane Austen.  These disparate writers all share the knack of creating engrossing characters and worlds where there exists a wryly humorous (and sometimes inky-dark) view of human foibles...  Their unembittered laughter can polish up my own smudged perspective.

Janeites! Grab This Book

I just finished a terrific book about Jane Austen's novels and about more than that:  A Jane Austen Education.

(You!  Rolling your eyes.  Pay attention.)

This book's author, William Deresiewicz, (yes, a guy) started with the same prejudice against ROmance you have, the same girl-talk phobia, the same fear of dreary, verbose 19th century classics written by dead white chicks.

He learned better.

Sure, it's possible to read Austen as gooshy romance (by ignoring her bite, as films tend to) or to read purely for social comedy (by ignoring the suffering), but there's more going on.  But I hadn't considered - in the depth this scholar has - just how much of an instruction manual for life Austen's novels are.  Our age does not much truck with the idea of character building, but that is what Austen writes of: love made possible by understanding another's character and by cultivating our own best self.

Mixing novels with events in his own life, Deresiewicz illustrates Austen's points.  So perfect are his illustrations that I wondered if this was fictionalized.  It's so rare for what is, at one level, a book of literary criticism to be this engaging and this much of a page-turner (I hated putting it down to sleep and started reading again before breakfast) that I can only admit to deep suspicion... (Unworthy suspicion - a character flaw I'm working on.).  Why can't literary and real-life insight be both entertaining and profound...?

(Profound?  Did I type that?  Inconceivable!*)

public domain images mashed

If you, Dear Reader, have read a little Jane Austen, read this book.  Or BUY this book.  (I will.)  If you haven't yet discovered Jane Austen or were taught by 9th grade English class to hate her... please try again.  You'll be a better person.  Start with Pride and Prejudice.  Then read this book.


Earlier post on J. A.

* ( As Vizzini of The Princess Bride would say.)

Film Famine!

Like a shipwrecked mariner (think Castaway), I can't get out to movies right now.

Bummer.

So I'm starting a old-movie marathon - no theme, just the randomness of Netflix and Christmas presents, then a flashlight tour of the Film Vaults.

Last night started the legendary BBC Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, whose broadcast brought Britain to a standstill (feminine Britain anyway).

Throws a whole new light on the classics!

Jane

I'm reading up...

For Christmas I got Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury by Rebecca Dickson, a useful sampler of all-things-Jane. Its text is Janeite -informative and a bit, well, "sweet." In counterpoint I'm reading Jane's Fame by Claire Harmon, who calls the authoress "bloody minded." Closer to how I imagine that tart lady. But the best version I've found is in Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen. A wonderful, thoughtful, writer's-eye-view.

Favorite Austen novels?

Pride and Prejudice - the young woman's book

Persuasion - the grownup book