Tag: Jane Austen

REVIEW: Sense & Sensibility: A New Musical

Sappy Leave a comment

From early to mid-March, under the direction of Matt Bogart, The Encore Musical Theatre put on a beautiful production of Paul Gordon’s Sense & Sensibility: A New Musical. The set design was grand and elaborate, making full use of the theater’s space. The costumes featured intricate details that reflected the period’s distinctive clothing, and the acting and soulful singing contributed to an immersive atmosphere. 

Based on the romance novel by Jane Austen, the plot takes place around 1792-1797 and follows two sisters, Elinor andMarianne Dashwood, played by Chelsea Packard and Jessica Grové. After the sudden death of their father, the women of the Dashwood family are forced to leave their home due to inheritance laws and relocate to a more modest property in the country. The sisters grew anxious about their marriage prospects, as women at the time heavily relied on marriage to secure their future. As they struggle to balance romantic desires with practical concerns, the story unfolds with messy relationships and complex emotions.

Because a musical and a novel are different genres, the musical’s pacing was faster, more direct, and exaggerated. While it lacks Austen’s iconic narrative prose, the show boasts an impressive amount of musical numbers with nineteen songs in the first act and twenty-one in the second that all showcase the characters’ personalities and emotional depth more vividly than the novel. As a result, characters with smaller roles in the book were able to have a bigger part in the musical. 

The first musical number that stood out to me was “Lydia,” sung by Colonel Brandon, largely due to the powerful voice of director and actor Matt Bogart, who is also a professor at SMTD. Bogart’s tone and vibrato enhanced the romantic desperation his character conveyed. My favorite songs from Act I, however, were the last three numbers: “Lavender Drops (Reprise),” “Hello,” and “Somewhere in Silence.” “Lavender Drops” and “Somewhere in Silence” were duets between Elinor and Marianne; their voices complimented each other beautifully, reinforcing their sisterly bond for the audience. In contrast, “Hello” is sung by Elinor and her love interest Edward Ferrars (played by Adam Woolsey), which offered insight into their relationship through its thoughtful lyrics. In Act II, I especially loved the humorous lyrics of “Wrong Side of Five and Thirty” sung by Colonel Brandon, which gave his otherwise serious character a more personable and vulnerable side.

Overall, although the tickets were a bit pricey and the commute to the theater was longer than preferred, the high production quality made it well worth it. I enjoyed being able to see a professor perform because I had only seen students perform previously. I’ve always been awed by the students at SMTD, and Bogart’s talent and skill demonstrated how great professors can foster great students. While this wasn’t my favorite musical narratively or musically, it was still a lot of fun to watch.



REVIEW: Emma.

Shannon Z Leave a comment

Autumn de Wilde’s Emma. offers a refreshingly whimsical and defiant, pastel-colored adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic romance-comedy novel. The quirky addition of punctuating the title itself complements the film’s mood and aesthetics perfectly, and reflects the protagonist’s emphatic and self-assured mannerisms. The film opens with an elegant quote and homage to Austen’s 1815 novel,

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich… had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” – Jane Austen, 1815

Indeed, actress Anya Taylor-Joy portrays the titular character Emma Woodhouse every bit as ‘handsome, clever, and rich’ as she perceives herself to be. Taylor-Joy has perfected the detached and rational, yet keenly observant composure unique to Emma and other queen-bee characters, which she punctuates with a penetrating and cool stare that the viewer learns to associate with the plot’s twists, turns, and grievous misunderstandings. Unabashedly headstrong as Emma may be, the character has historically carried certain unlikeable qualities that set Emma apart from Austen’s other famous female protagonists – Emma is spoiled rich and prideful, and with that pride wholly conforms to her period’s class and status norms. Additionally, her stubborn convictions as a self-proclaimed neighborhood matchmaker are almost manipulative, especially when examined alongside the friendship she forms with the less-sophisticated, bumbling Harriet Smith. However, de Wilde’s adaptation and Taylor-Joy’s performance not only allow but also highlight these traditionally unfavorable traits, which is precisely what I find most charming about this film. Unlike its predecessors, Emma. does not attempt as much to reconcile Emma’s haughty, self-satisfied nature with ‘good-girl’ behavior; to the end, Emma’s pride remains undiluted, even as she receives her happy ending with Mr. Knightley. Taylor-Joy with Johnny Flynn, who plays Knightley in the movie.

Though de Wilde’s interpretation of Emma. is slightly modernized in terms of its unapologetic treatment of Emma, the storyline and costume elements remain true to the original narrative while introducing color and whimsy. The cinematography and visual aesthetics of Emma. are every bit as vivid and spirited as the female lead herself, and can be likened to a sugary and symmetrical Parisian macaron. De Wilde’s use of visual symmetry is consistent and strategic, most evidently when interweaving type into lush backgrounds and more subtly to emphasize Emma’s careful hold on her town’s social hierarchy. In later scenes, the visual symmetry is pushed to represent symmetries between characters such as Emma and Jane Fairfax, a multitalented, elegant woman of Emma’s same age. The dreamy and ornate filming locations, shot around England, further emphasize the lavish lives of the characters in Emma. and the comedic frivolity of their distresses.

If you’re seeking a wonderfully lighthearted, visually pleasing period film – I would highly recommend heading over to the Michigan Theater to watch Emma. You can find tickets here.

REVIEW: Sense & Sensibility

Fareah Fysudeen 1 Comment

As a tried and true fan of Jane Austen, I was thrilled to find out SMTD’s first theatre production of the year would be the famous Sense & Sensibility. I resonate with Austen’s work because there’s realness and rawness to her characters beneath layers of social conventions and eighteenth century polity. Beneath the postured spines seated on cushioned dinner chairs, beneath the kind and ordinary curtsy of a bonnet-clad woman, beneath the pleasant laughter, the polite greetings, the performative manners, there is a precisely calculated diplomacy. Austen knows how to make a domestic novel scintillate with political and social meaning– she knows how to write a powerful and flawed woman grapple with a society entrenched in performativity. 

My roommate, who is currently taking a class on Jane Austen, accompanied me to the play (or I accompanied them– it was an assignment on their part). I wasn’t familiar with the book, though I’ve heard it’s slightly less compelling than Pride & Prejudice, which I believe is difficult to surpass in mastery and drama as it is. Thus, there was an innocent blankness to my viewing the performance, which I sometimes prefer to an oversatured understanding of context and previous adaptations (re: my review on The Goldfinch here can explain how my loving a book too much ruined the movie). 

The performance opened a few minutes before the lights officially went down; the characters started dressing on stage, men and women together, chitchatting, gossipping, fixing each other’s hair, playing cards, tossing a birdie around. It felt extraordinarily Brechtian, the show before the show, the actors initially as equals to the audience. Then– the lights went low and a Black-Eyed Peas started playing! Our characters, clad fully in regency-era attire, began a coordinated hip-hip-ish dance routine, danced while they brought the dead Mr. Dashwood in his shroud to the stage. Lights down; the gossips starts speaking heatedly about the Dashwoods’ newfound poverty, and thus begins the play. 

The story follows reserved Eleanor Dashwood and her emotionally eccentric sister, Marianne Dashwood, through a marriage plot. The Dashwood family are now poor and trying to stay reputable after the death of Mr. Dashwood. Their marriages must be well-calculated. Initially, both girls have men of interest, but as the plot goes on, these relationships slowly reveal prior commitments, betrayal, and heartbreak. Though the story finally ends on a happy note, we are taken through an emotional ride between two sisters: one who is unnaturally stoic, and another who has unrestrained melodrama, pitching us between the highs and lows of love and romance in a constrained and classist society. 

I truly loved this play. Some of the creative liberties they took were marvellous as well as comical: the gossips impersonating animals (one had acting like a horse down to a T!), some of the lines stressed just perfectly, and a few of the most mundane moments were the ones I remember most: the surreal moment were music started playing when the dashing Willoughby walks into the room in classic rom-com style, when Eleanor and Marianne’s beds were propped up standing up to face the audience– all of these essentially get at the whimsy and wit in Austen’s world. Set against a beautiful pastel stage that immersed me in the blush-toned hues of rolling countrysides and polished China, pink berets and umpire waistlines, I felt transported and enchanted. SMTD has never failed me in one of their performances, but this was a treat to watch. As an avid Austen fan, this was perhaps one of my favorite renditions of her work.