‘Pride and Prejudice’ should delight audiences
Swine Palace’s “Pride and Prejudice” is a Valentine for Baton Rouge audiences.
Friday’s opening night at the Claude L. Shaver Theatre is sold out. Most of Saturday’s tickets had been sold by Thursday afternoon.
Performances of the show may be added, said Swine Palace’s Jacquelyn Craddock. Call (225) 578-3527 or go to http://www.swinepalace.org for updates.
Wednesday night’s Pay-What-You-Can performance was under three hours with a 15-minute intermission. The first act was a little less than an hour and a half. The second act, right at an hour.
The cast was close to opening night quality with Thursday’s preview night for more polishing and tightening.
An already good show should get better.
Drew and Joanna Battles play Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. That the Battles are married may help their performances, but the Battles would be good in the roles if they’d just started dating.
In the Jane Austen novel, Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy set the standard for a couple’s awkward communication as they slowly realize they’ve fallen in love with one another.
The novel’s adaptation for the stage by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan packs Austen’s novel into a play that “Pride and Prejudice” fans like.
Director George Judy, scenic designer Ken George, lighting designer Ken White, sound designer Tyler Kieffer, choreographer Molly Buchmann and stage manager Karli Henderson turn the play into a dance movement that seamlessly, and quickly, moves the stage story through its many scenes.
Without the skillful, artistic stage craft, this long play would become a sleepover.
The Battles do a wonderful job of playing characters who learn before our eyes that they are much alike despite their very different backgrounds.
Cristine McMurdo-Wallis (Mrs. Bennet) and Thomas Anderson (Mr. Bennet), another married couple off stage, have five daughters the Bennets are desperate to marry off.
McMurdo-Wallis and Anderson, two of the play’s five stage veterans, are outstanding as comedic characters who help us understand a dysfunctional British family of 1811.
Monique McCain plays the beautiful, unassuming Jane Bennet courted by Mr. Bingley played by Benjamin Koucherik.
Katrina Despain is good as Lydia, the Bennet daughter most affected by Mrs. Bennet’s campaign of marriage at any cost.
Greg Leute and Bacot Wright, the play’s third real married couple, play Sir and Lady Lucas as well as Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.
Leute looks great as both Sir Lucas and Mr. Gardiner in costumes by Corey Globke.
For this play, Globke has created costumes that deserve their own curtain calls.
That brings us to Nic Hamel whose Mr. Collins, swinging effortlessly between obsequiousness and smarm, is the audience favorite.
Collins, a clergyman of convenience, lacks the ability to see himself as women see him – repulsive.
After Hamel’s first appearance in the play, the audience kept a sharp eye for his return.
“Here he comes,” a woman behind me said as Hamel, as Collins, charged into the scene.