By SHARON EBERSON
Escape the holiday bustle and hustle and head over to the South Side, where you can join those crazy kids from Pride and Prejudice in a heartfelt romp, tinseled and decked out with Austen-esque charm.
A fine mix of youth and experience, along with a few magical touches of technical flair, adorn the drawing-room comedy Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, which arrives at City Theatre as a welcome addition to Pittsburgh’s holiday theater scene.
The cast of this romantic charmer is populated with local ties galore, all making their debuts on the Main Stage.
For Gabrielle Kogut as outwardly aloof, inwardly fiery Mary Bennet, and Michael Patrick Trimm as the endearingly smitten Arthur de Bourgh, the roles of misfits who find their way to each other fit like custom-made gloves.
University of Pittsburgh alum Kogut and Trimm, out of Point Park, are standouts among an optimized cast and creative team, including Carnegie Mellon students and colleagues of director Kyle Haden.
Christmas at Pemberley shines a light on the Bennet sister we didn’t know we cared about, previously priggish Mary, and introduces Arthur, a newly minted lord, uneasy in his title, as her match. There is nothing subtle about their connection. The fun is getting these two to an ending that Austen would approve of, and illustrates the debt every romcom owes to the British novelist, who was writing about love amid genteel English countryside society during the Napoleonic Wars.
at City Theatre. (Image: Kristi Jan Hoover)
This P&P sequel by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon is attuned to Austenisms and liberally sprinkles references for fans, particularly when Hansel Tan as Mr. Darcy, loosening up a bit as a happily married man, and James Counihan as the ever-jovial Mr. Bingley, recall their respective courtships, with many a knowing wince or smile. It’s a riot, what Counihan can do with an expression of contentment or boredom.
These actors take beloved characters and become believable extensions of those we know from the book, movies, miniseries and so on, with the possible exception of Mary Bennet, the middle sister who had old maid written all over her unyielding face, and who played the pianoforte with all the passion of an inanimate object.
I say played, because this Mary, two years after the events of P&P, is just as opinionated and studious, but she has perfected her musicianship with a vengeance.
Mary also has some ideas that may seem foreign to the girl we once knew. In her opening monologue, she asks, “Can one lead a large life that is only in the mind?”
Kogut, who has performed in Cincinnati production of Christmas at Pemberley, does a great showing of superiority and indignation that melts into a chance not just at love, but to experience the real world, beyond the books she reads so avidly.
Just as surprised at the transformation is everyone else at Pemberley, including three of her sisters. (Kitty Bennet is MIA – that’s for another Gunderson-Melcon play.)
(Image: Kristi Jan Hoover)
Elizabeth Bennet is played by Carnegie Mellon senior Sophia Macy with the grace and attitude we’d expect from “Lizzie,” but also with the weight of responsibility she has as Mrs. Darcy, mistress of Pemberley. (Proud dad and Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated actor William H. Macy was onhand to watch his daughter on opening night. He said Mr. Darcy was a role he has always wanted to play.)
Elizabeth is uplifted by the arrival of her beloved and very pregnant sister, Mrs. Jane Bingley (Alex Manalo, a Point Park grad whose work onstage and behind the scenes has graced many local stages). Jane gets a warm welcome, while Mary, hardly noticed, heads for the Darcys’ abundant library.
When youngest sister Lydia (CMU senior Alex Sheffield) sweeps in like a red-lipped hurricane, havoc follows. Lydia’s unsubtle pursuit of her own happiness gets in the way of Mary and Arthur, one of several diversions from the inevitable.
The first act builds slowly toward a big twist in the form of a surprise guest (CMU senior Leyla Davis), who will be the biggest obstacle to the couple’s happiness. Her arrival also heralds a fast-paced, fun-filled second act.
As people come and go, fight and make up, Kogut’s Mary declares, “I detest a farce,” and the race to the finish is on.
A prescient point made by Mary to Arthur, who is more versed in the habits of certain snails than in matters of the heart, is that as a man, he has choices that are not available to a woman.
It’s knowledge that isn’t safe in the hands of every man of that era, particularly one who has just inherited a title and the palatial home of his late aunt, the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh. But it sits well with someone Mary could love.
One of the scene-stealers of the show and the butt of many a joke is a Christmas tree – Elizabeth showing her rebellious side by bucking trends of the late 1700s-early 1800s to introduce a German holiday tradition.
Although most everyone can’t understand what the tree is doing indoors, it becomes a conversation piece and gives a festive aura to scenic designer Ann Mundell’s elegant vision of Pemberley. Hugh Hanson’s array of period costumes are designed with beautiful detail, fit and character awareness – for example, Kogut’s Mary wears only understated colors, while thee bright yellow and blue dress worn by Sheffielld’s Lydia screams her personality.
If I have a nitpick, it is that much of the first-act action takes place upstage, especially when the sisters gather in the confining space between two chairs and the tree.
A lovely unveiling comes at the start, when a scrim holding a representation of the set is pulled back to reveal the real thing. The imaginative work of CMU grad and lighting designer Pablo D. Anton also creates a gorgeous effect to send Friday’s opening-night audience into waves of appreciative applause.
For fans of Pride and Prejudice, Christmas at Pemberley presents a feast of previously unexplored possibilities for the Bennet sisters and their extended family. There are two more plays by Gunderson and Melcon in this trilogy of sequels, with a hint that the fate of Kitty Bennet is coming up next.
As Christmas at Pemberley drew to a close, it was a favorite quote from Jane Austen’s Emma, another novel about romance and hard-won wisdom, that sprang to mind:
“Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner,” she wrote, “will beat all the clearness of head in the world.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
City Theatre’s production of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley runs through December 17, 2023, on the Mainstage, 1300 Bingham St., South Side. Tickets: visit https://citytheatrecompany.org/play/miss-bennet-christmas-at-pemberley/ or call 412-431-CITY.
I enjoyed this show tremendously! Great post.