The Pride and Prejudice in Forte Musical Theatre’s musical Austentatious is not the Jane Austin classic I read. Read More
The Pride and Prejudice in Forte Musical Theatre’s musical Austentatious is not the Jane Austin classic I read. I don’t remember Mr. Bingley and Jane running off to Amsterdam, a transgender pirate queen, or a tap duel between Elizabeth and Lydia in New York, but it’s all there in the version a local community theatre
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The Pride and Prejudice in Forte Musical Theatre’s musical Austentatious is not the Jane Austin classic I read.
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I don’t remember Mr. Bingley and Jane running off to Amsterdam, a transgender pirate queen, or a tap duel between Elizabeth and Lydia in New York, but it’s all there in the version a local community theatre group is rehearsing in Austentatious, a musical Calgary’s Joe Slabe wrote with four of his college friends in London 20 years ago.
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Austentatious is a loving backstage parody of the machinations that occur when the Cochrane Players choose to stage a new version of the Austen classic by one of its members. Emily has not only written the adaptation but is its choreographer and costume designer as well as playing Elizabeth Bennett, the heroine of the piece. She has achieved this status by seducing director Dominic, who is way over his head in taking on this responsibility.
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Lauren (Sarah Irwin) assumed she was going to get the role of Elizabeth, and brought her boyfriend David along to the auditions. She gets the minor role of Elizabeth’s sister Lydia, while David is cast as Mr. Darcy, the male lead. Long-suffering Jess is cast as sister Jane opposite Blake, a local pothead whose doctor feels he would benefit from the experience of being in a play. It is up to stage manager Sam to keep this rag-tag group in some semblance of order.
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Valerie Anne Pearson, who directed Austentatious, has wisely cast it with some of Calgary’s finest musical theatre actors because it takes pros to play amateurs. All the extravagant antics are a tightrope act. They have to be outrageous but not silly, and Pearson’s cast ably knows when to pull in the reins, and when to let loose.
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Natascha Girgis makes Emily the true diva, especially in her wild dance sequences. She makes Emily the freest of free spirits. Doug McKeag’s Dominic is putty in her hands. He is all bravura with nothing to back it. Girgis and McKeag have a telling number called I Can See It Now, in which they show just how far apart they are in conceptualizing his new Austentatious.
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At first, Eric Wigston’s David is star-struck by all his co-stars, especially his girlfriend Lauren, and wants only to do everything By The Book, his first big solo. Eventually, he becomes the real backbone of the company, seeing that the real force behind it is Sam (Jessica Jones), the stage manager. They are the real Elizabeth and Darcy of Austen’s classic, as they reveal in the song Between the Lines.
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Irwin plays the villain of the piece if there is one. She’s out for revenge for being snubbed. She is horrified when she sees David falling for Sam, a lowly stage manager, as she reveals in her number Acting Differently. The audience sees what David sees. Jones is the real star of this company and of this show. She is so real. So talented. So confident. She carries the spotlight with her wherever she roams.