★★★

“The audience were there for a fun night out and they left happy”

The UK national tour of Pride & Prejudice* (*Sort Of) opened this week at the beautiful Theatre Royal Windsor.

Pride & Prejudice* (*Sort Of) by Isobel McArthur, after Jane Austen, is a fun reinvention of Austen’s caustic tale of love and manners, performed by an all-female cast of five, with double-quick costume changes, playing all the roles. Audiences never seem to tire of the endless TV, films and theatre productions based on Austen’s beloved classic period romance, and devoted fans will quickly recognise a nod to Colin Firth’s Darcy “wet shirt” scene in this adaptation.

The original production of the show started life at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, went to the Fringe, toured, transferred to the West End and won an Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2022. This current touring production feels somewhat re-hashed and clunky, knowing too well where the comedy moments are; be it the cast as baaing sheep, presenting a plate of Ferrero Rocher at a ball, grabbing a mike and singing a karaoke song or a quick change – it will get a laugh out of the audience. The biggest laughs of the night were always the casual expletives.…

Comedy is centre stage as we meet the five, playing below stairs maids wearing white Regency style petticoats and yellow marigolds, cleaning the Bennet family’s chamber pots. They rue Austen’s lack of care for the servants in her books, who never get a happy ending. Then with a grab of a microphone they break into song and turn into Mrs Bennet and the five Bennet sisters – well four Bennet sisters, we don’t ever meet Kitty.

McArthur’s adaptation is for modern audiences to enjoy and mostly keeps close to the original story of the Regency period dating game, when women could not inherit wealth and must marry for financial gain. A few new touches include friend Charlotte’s unrequited love for Elizabeth Bennet – but she still ends up with Mr Collins.

The cast of young actresses Emma Rose Creaner, Eleanor Kane, Rhianna McGreevy, Naomi Preston Low and Christine Steel clearly relish all the roles that they play as the tale of the uncouth Mrs Bennet’s race to marry off her five dowry-less daughters before they lose the family home unfolds. We never meet Mr Bennet, who is played by a back facing armchair reading an open newspaper – genius casting! Love is eventually found with Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy but not with the devil may care Wickham.

Slightly disconcerting to the ear, was the fact that all the Bennet family members had different accents, as the cast were playing them with their own natural accent, making the production feel slightly studenty, but perhaps that was the intention. A standout moment was Rhianna McGreevy capturing Darcy’s pride with his sincere love for Elizabeth Bennet, with the audience routing for him to win her hand. And then there was Emma Rose Creaner whose every role was beautifully delivered be it her feisty Irish maid, the accident prone, stuck hand in a Pringle carton Mr Bingley, the dull yet softly spoken Charlotte or the stuck-up vicious Caroline Bingley.

Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s set featuring a curved staircase, was cleverly designed to transform into another stately home or ballroom by simply adding a modern standard lamp or a life size horse (!), and her costumes were uncomplicated yet said everything that needed to be said about each character.

The audience were there for a fun night out and they left happy.

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★★

“Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue.”

Although Alan Bleasdale wrote the original series of television plays before Margaret Thatcher came to power, it wasn’t first broadcast until 1982 and was consequently seen to be a specific critique of the Thatcher era. His writing, though, had a far more wide-ranging effect that guaranteed the success of the stories. The nostalgic and gritty realism still holds power nearly half a century later, as evidenced by James Graham’s stirring adaptation for the stage, currently on a nationwide tour.

The early nineteen-eighties were different things for different people. At one end of the scale there were the rich and ambitious, riding on progress and the jetstream of new money. But while Harry Enfield parodied this selfishness of the yuppie culture (we all remember the ‘Loadsamoney’ character?), Bleasdale was focusing on the underside; the high unemployment and collapse of the primary industries. “Boys form the Blackstuff” follows five working class men trying to keep afloat amid this recession, not helped by the suspicious and bullying hand of the Department of Employment.

Amy Jane Cook’s brutalist and severe set evokes the Liverpool docklands with its iron frameworks which close in on the more intimate scenes, lending an air of claustrophobia to the domestic bickering that runs parallel to the collective fight for survival that these characters are up against. Kate Wasserberg’s stylish direction weaves the short scenes together into a series of choreographed vignettes that flow, then clash like freshwater rapids coming up against the murkiness and remorselessness of the Mersey.

We get to know the principal characters early on (if we don’t know them already). Chrissie, Loggo, Yosser, George, Dixie and Snowy. Even if you are unfamiliar with the original, and once you’ve acclimatised to the authentic Liverpudlian accent, their stories are easy to follow. The performances of each cast member are strikingly individual and recognisable. Obviously, Jay Johnson’s ‘Yosser’ stands out from the crowd with his peppered catchphrases (‘gizza job’ and ‘I could do that’) and jittery, unpredictable energy. We realise that this could be a play about mental health – a sudden understanding that whisks the narrative into the present day but without the unease of having to tread carefully through contemporary fragility. Words of wisdom, particularly from Ged McKenna’s wonderfully uneducated yet perfectly erudite ‘George’, are never lost in the humour. We laugh through this show just as much as we gasp at the personal hardships endured.

The pace picks up in the second act, even as the scenes get longer and more introspective. The humour and pathos join forces in monologue. Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue. A funeral scene, as poignant as they come, bleeds brilliantly into the comedy of a dole queue. An anguished wife (a superb Sian Polhill-Thomas) wondering how to feed her children is, in the next scene, an acerbically grim clerk at the jobcentre. But under the lights, each character casts shadow of hope. Even if the shades aren’t subtle, it is the contrast of light and dark that bring this show alive.

We might not have admitted this in the eighties, but these ‘boys’ feel emasculated, fragile and desperate for hope. The writing is sensitive beyond its years, and in Graham’s revival we can carouse in the period without having to make excuses for it. Despite being geographically and culturally specific, it is universal. And despite being rooted in a particular decade, it is timeless. The stories of ordinary people, told in an extraordinary production.

PRIDE & PREJUDICE* (*SORT OF)

Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★

“The audience were there for a fun night out and they left happy”

PRIDE & PREJUDICE* (*SORT OF)

Theatre Royal Windsor then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 17th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Mihaela Bodlovic

Previously reviewed at this venue:

PRIDE

PRIDE

PRIDE

BOYS FROM THE BLACKSTUFF

Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★★

“Tragedy and farce link arms and are not afraid to share the same lines of dialogue.”