Growing up in the nonspecific North of England as the only sister of seven brothers, Cath liked to take charge of the narrative, casting and directing her brothers in all their games, and that's what she's still doing now. Joined by the other two major characters, Isabella Thorpe (AK Golding) and Henry Tilney (Sam Newton,) she gets them to play all the other characters as she grows up, reaches her teens, and becomes engrossed in books about tall, dark, handsome and mysterious men, and the innocent young women who get transfixed by them and their windswept ancestral castles. I know, the Harry and Mollie from The Traitors jokes write themselves. On her first visit to Bath to indulge her growing interest in balls (yeah, Cooper isn't afraid to take the sense of humour there although she doesn't overplay this hand) Cath meets Hen and Iz, her big romantic interest and her new best friend. Except, which one of them is which?
On Hannah Sibai's simple set dominated by chandeliers that give off bisexual lighting, Tessa Walker's production manages quite a distinct comic storytelling style that dips into the very silly - the panto puns, cross-dressing, and if Jane Austen ever wrote down the word "twat" anywhere, let alone in this novel, I'd be fairly surprised - but doesn't feel defined by parody or clowning. Instead it really feels like it knows and likes its central trio and wants to understand them.
The crux of the plot is the two women making a pact that they'll marry each other's brothers so they can be sisters-in-law and always have an excuse to get together as often as they want. They soon both regret this when they meet their prospective husbands, but Cooper also explicitly tells us they'd rather cut out the middle men and be with each other, and this becomes the reason Iz refuses to go along with it. (Frankly fair enough, as Cath has already made it clear she'd rather pursue Hen and his titular spooky old mansion.)
While there's sensitivity in the character portrayals there's still room for big comic setpieces: The cast manage to keep multiple parodies of the famous talking-and-dancing scenes funny, and when we eventually get to the gloomy Abbey itself, Newton gets a plum comic role as Hen's mysterious sister, all distant looks into dark corners and sentences that tail off into a sigh. But despite sniffing at the gothic genre the show suggests Austen was showing nuance of her own, understanding the way the lurid tales with supernatural overtones might comfort people experiencing loss and grief.
Cooper's rejection of the traditional happy ending was a bit abrupt for me, but this is undoubtedly a hit, managing to mix the spirit of Austen with something completely current and ever-so-gently subversive. Based on today's matinée audience Austen's box office power is as strong as ever, and if fans of period romance aren't going to get exactly what they were expecting, surely only the grumpiest will be disappointed.
Northanger Abbey by Zoe Cooper, inspired by the novel by Jane Austen, is booking until the 24th of February at the Orange Tree Theatre, then continuing on tour to Bolton, Scarborough and Keswick.
Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Pamela Raith.
No comments:
Post a Comment