Now, be honest: if you were making a
list of stage adaptations for which you’d expect to find a notice at
the theatre door warning about strobe lighting effects, your top 500
probably wouldn’t include Jane Austen’s
Persuasion. Well, if you were in
Manchester at the moment, you’d be wrong. But be honest too: having
encountered that, you’d expect the show to be just a self-satisfied,
modish “update” far more concerned with its own ideas than with those
of Miss Austen. And you’d be wrong there too.
Jeff James, who co-adapts and directs, has assisted hot-shot Flemish
director Ivo van Hove on several of the latter’s British productions,
and his approach here is similar to van Hove’s usual method. He uses a
broadly contemporary staging, not because Modern Is Good, but because
stripping the material of those elements that pin it palpably in a past
era allow its concerns to be seen more clearly in our own.
Thus, when Austen’s characters pay a visit to Lyme Regis, the sea is
represented by a torrent of suds that cascade down on to the stage, and
characters begin to body-surf... one, on press night, right into the
lap of a surprised (and, I think, delighted) front-row punter. But the
words, sentiments and emotions remain clearly and powerfully Austen’s.
(Well,
almost all the words:
I’m not sure any Austen character ever dropped an F-bomb at a society
soirée in Bath.)
Lara Rossi conveys all the complexities of protagonist Anne Elliot:
rightly disdainful of a social culture seemingly concerned only with
marrying its younger members off, but allowing that disillusionment to
alienate her too far. (Mark Twain spoke of a cat he had that sat on a
hot stove once and never sat on a hot stove again; what’s wrong with
that?, asked someone, to which Twain replied that the damn fool cat
never sat on a cold stove either.) Likewise, we see throughout the play
the different aspects of persuasion, from selfish manipulation to
honest counsel, and Anne’s process of learning to distinguish between
them. (The novel, published posthumously exactly 200 years ago, was
given its title not by Austen but her brother.)
Clearly, I can’t pretend that James’ version is wholly devoid of
wackiness. But on the few occasions when it really goes to town (and I
don’t mean Bath), the crucial thing is that it doesn’t set itself above
the material; when laughs come, they’re warm laughs at the cheek of the
adaptation, not derision at any distortion of Austen – there’s none of
that. So, as the Cresta polar bear used to remark: it’s frothy, man.
Written for The Lady.