Pride & Prejudice* (*Sort Of) promises an audacious retelling of Jane Austen’s most iconic love story as it heads to Southampton’s Mayflower from June 10-14 – a night during which men, money and microphones will be fought over against a string of pop classics including Young Hearts Run Free, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, group arts editor at Sussex Newspapers. Really lovely
00:06to speak to Isabel MacArthur. Now, Pride and Prejudice, sort of, and the crucial bit is
00:11sort of, is heading to the Mayflower Theatre Southampton from June the 10th to the 14th.
00:16Now, what a fantastic creation, seeing it in Chichester a couple of times. It's hilariously
00:20funny, isn't it? And it's so popular. Why do you think it struck the chord that it has?
00:26Why is it working so well? I guess it's the question every theatre maker asks themselves.
00:32Why did that one take off and that one didn't? And if I could just get the formula, I'd be
00:36able to. Well, you're in the position of an analysing success, aren't you? So why do you
00:41think you hit the spot with this? Bless you, Phil. I don't know. I think people
00:45love a good love story. They love to laugh and they love nostalgia. And one of the things
00:51that's really available to us with this story is a sense of nostalgia that actually spans
00:56several hundred years of pop cultural history. People love the nostalgia of those who do,
01:03of period drama. They weren't alive during the Napoleonic Wars, but they've got a sense
01:08that actually to be able to wear those costumes and occupy those drawing rooms would have been
01:12romantic or exciting in some way, however little we know about the reality of that. And I think
01:18because this is a version of Pride and Prejudice that enjoys all those types of love that we can be
01:27nostalgic about in our lives, the electricity of new love, old and enduring and beautiful love,
01:34and leans on karaoke for some of its storytelling, we can go to nostalgic places across music and across
01:42various kinds of love stories that we've enjoyed. And then yeah, all all kind of
01:48sort of really bask in all the sweeping scores and
01:53And you've had a fabulous success possibly because you noticed something when you read the book that's
01:58probably been lost in it. The fact, as you say, the book is hilariously funny and it's a rom-com.
02:03Two aspects that you bring out completely, don't you?
02:06Yeah, it's the original rom-com and it's a fantastic rom-com. Everybody's as absurd as they are,
02:14conflicted or interesting or beautiful. And what you recognise, I think, when you read Jane Austen is
02:20how recognisable these archetypes are, both amongst the people in our own lives, but also across
02:28such a long period of brilliant storytelling and romance telling in particular, when Jarvis
02:35Cocker writes about how mysterious it is to fall in love, he's writing the same sentiments and asking
02:41the same questions that Jane Austen is. And so it becomes a fun and beautiful task to be able to
02:48ally philosophies and ask all those questions that we'll always be asking about love.
02:53So clearly you're absolutely in the spirit of the original, but I guess at the same time,
02:57are you walking a bit of a tightrope because there are some very dyed in the wool, absolute
03:02Austenites, aren't there?
03:04Yeah, I mean, I'm proud...
03:05You've got to bring them in too, haven't you?
03:06Yeah, absolutely. And not just bring them in, I'm going into their territory, so they've got to
03:11let me in. I mean, I think the thing is that I'm proud that we, no Austenite has ever left
03:19this show dissatisfied. They are all happy that we have honoured the book that they love,
03:25but that's because we love this book too. So, you know, I think that the peril sometimes of
03:30adaptation is to think that you're cleverer than the original writer, and we are not cleverer than
03:38Tobias Smollett, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens. We're not. We need to be able to just make sure that
03:44there are no barriers to access when it comes to these old books and contemporary audiences,
03:48and I think that's the job of the adaptor, is to just make sure that there's nothing standing
03:53in the way of the enjoyment of the already brilliant story.
03:56So if you had a ghostly Jane Austen sitting in the back of the stalls,
04:00what would she make of it, do you think?
04:01I can only...
04:02She would feel the respect, would she?
04:04I hope so, because she is the genius whose work we're putting on stage, and I feel like
04:11I've been communing with the spirit of Jane Austen since 2018. Every conversation, every event,
04:19every moment of reflection, I think I would adore her. I think she was a radical, funny, clever
04:29feminist, and that she would have been brilliant company at a party to boot.
04:35Well, it's a lovely prospect to see this again for a third time. I'm really looking forward to it.
04:41Thank you so much. Thank you for supporting me.
04:42Lovely to speak to you.
04:43You too, Phil. Cheers. Bye-bye.