‘Christmas at Pemberley’ a treat for Austen fans
It’s no accident that “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” is one of the most-produced new plays in the United States over the past two seasons.
It’s a Reese’s cup of theater, wittily mashing together two ingredients with wide appeal: Jane Austen’s characters and Christmas.
Playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon have created a sequel to “Pride and Prejudice,” bringing four of the Bennet sisters together for the holidays at the estate of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy in 1815. Shrewdly, they’ve made Mary, the sister least developed in Austen’s novel, the central figure in this new story.
“Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” has a touch of Yuletide humor, with other characters puzzled by Lizzie’s adoption of the German custom of bringing a tree inside the house. In a more sustained way, the comedy re-creates a universal holiday situation: “what happens when families come home and are in these tight spaces,” said Kimberly Senior, director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s new production, which begins Nov. 13 at the Quadracci Powerhouse.
In sync with the playwrights, Senior is orchestrating a production she believes will be faithful to its Regency setting but also say plenty to audiences in 2018.
For starters, it’s a multiracial cast, in keeping with the playwrights’ intentions, expressed in the introduction to their script: “The writers encourage diverse casting — Jane Austen belongs to everyone.”
A woman who wants to be visible
Mary Bennet, now 20, arrives at Pemberley in full bloom as an adult woman. Her sisters don’t immediately grasp this, but the visiting Arthur de Bourgh does. This shy, bookish young single man is recently in possession of a good fortune, hint hint.
Their budding romance has a touch of “Big Bang Theory” about it, but with Mary as the acerbic Sheldon and Arthur as a more naive Amy. These scientifically minded souls bond over a copy of the book “Zoological Philosophy” by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, an important precursor of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
As smart and self-contained a person as she is, Mary yearns for more from life. “I lately struggle to find solace in either piano or books,” she tells Jane and Lizzy. “It’s a curious discontent. I cannot place its origin and therefore I cannot solve it.” (Rebecca Hurd, who plays Mary in the Rep’s show, learned piano so she could play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and other music in this production.)
What’s amazing about the Bennet sisters, Senior said, is “they are all in each of us”: Jane, an expectant mother and a caretaker who wants peace; Lizzy, the host and a doer; younger sister Lydia, “who’s thriving on brazen impulse … maybe she’s a little bit of a manifestation of who we would like to be… “
And then there’s Mary.
“Probably we all in many ways identify with Mary, who doesn’t feel seen and is invisible,” Senior said. “I certainly battle with that in my own life.”
In thinking about the Bennet sisters and pondering the family dynamics, Senior said she has been comparing the play to the works of Anton Chekhov, in particular “Uncle Vanya” and “Three Sisters.”
But she, and her cast, are also working hard on the comedy. Senior hinted that Milwaukee audiences will see echoes of Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and even the Three Stooges in some of the action onstage.
Choosing to work with more women
Fittingly, this comedy about smart, capable women (and the men who love them) has an all-female team of designers, including sets by Courtney O’Neill and costumes by Mieka van der Ploeg.
“This my season of doing that,” said Senior, a busy freelance director who works around the country. Of the 25 designers she’s hired for productions this year, 24 are women.
IF YOU GO
Milwaukee Repertory Theater performs “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley” from Nov. 13 through Dec. 16 at the Quadracci Powerhouse, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, visit milwaukeerep.com or call (414) 224-9490.
“I love all my male collaborators,” Senior said. “I grew up in American theater in a time where there weren’t really a lot of female designers, and so the designers … I became very comfortable with were mostly men.”
Senior realized she needed to make a conscious choice to get to know more female designers.
“I haven’t spent a lot of time in my life in rooms full of women,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of time in my life being the only woman in the room. Or the only woman (on) the panel. Or the only woman in the conversation.”
Only after Senior started to work in rooms full of women, she said, “I realized that I had been a minority.”
Expanding on that point, she enjoys walking into the rehearsal room for “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley.” “There is no majority. Many, many, many races are represented. I don’t know what the races are of half the people in the cast.”
Working with Ayad Akhtar
While Senior has directed dozens of plays and expects to direct many more, her most intense artistic experience came through working with Brookfield Central High School graduate Ayad Akhtar. Senior has directed Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced” multiple times, from inception and development through its Broadway production, and beyond.
“He was the person I talked to and saw the most for five years in a row,” Senior said.
“There are few people that I admire and respect as much as Ayad.
“What he and I had was the experience of living, of going to the movies, of going to museums and reading books, of talking about the world, and that being able to inform our work, rather than always talking about the work,” she said.
Like all successes, “Disgraced” feels inevitable now. But Senior remembers moments of worry about whether audiences would embrace the play, in particular because of its explosive moment of violence.
“Disgraced” “was so bold, as well as being so well written, so smart, so funny, really speaking to the top of an audience’s intelligence,” she said.
“That is why the play deserved the Pulitzer Prize. It belongs in the canon of that moment.”