Director Rachel Peake brings a fresh lens to Sense and Sensibility's tale of two sisters
No stuffy period piece, Kate Hamill’s play is fun and fast paced
Nyiri Karakas and Amanda Sum play contrasting sisters Elinor and Marianne. Photo by David Cooper
Director Rachel Peake
The Arts Club Theatre presents Sense and Sensibility at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre from March 2 to April 2
THERE IS A CERTAIN appeal to the slow-moving, BBC-style screen renditions of Jane Austen novels—the kind of literary, stuffy period pieces that you can happily binge over winter evenings, curled up with a blanket and a cup of tea.
Acclaimed New York City playwright Kate Hamill’s refreshing stage adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is decidedly not that kind of rendition. Sharply funny, fast-paced, and imaginatively staged, it employs a chorus of lively Gossips to emphasize the socially stifling world that surrounds sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood.
Vancouver director Rachel Peake fell in love with it when she saw it in a Big Apple production (where it had a much-extended, critically acclaimed run Off-Broadway a few years back).
“What really drew me in was the feeling, as an audience member, that I was invested in a game,” the Arts Club Theatre’s associate artistic director recounts over the phone between rehearsals. “It had a sort of playful inventiveness to it that really drew me in and made me see this story that I have known forever with fresh eyes.”
The main point, as Peake prepares to mount the play here at the Arts Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre, is that this script revitalizes the 200-year-old Austen favourite without putting off the author’s dedicated fan base—of which the director definitely counts herself a member. And yet its boosted energy promises to draw in Austen neophytes.
“I think that's something that Hamill’s adaptation brings out even more to those familiar with this play,” she explains. “Going back and rereading the novel, I really see the mischief in this writing, and the humour. It’s easy for me, as a woman in the 21st century, to kind of put women from that long ago into a certain box. And when I go back to Austen’s writing, I realize that there's a complicated and nuanced emotional landscape that’s as rich as anything today.
“I definitely think she was ahead of her time in terms of the written word,” she adds, “but it also makes me just understand that women in that time didn't necessarily have a voice.”
The beloved story centres around two siblings from opposite sides of the emotional spectrum. Elinor (played here by Nyiri Karakas) is practical and prudent to a fault. Marianne (Amanda Sum) is driven by her heart—her “sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation”, according to the novel. When they’re left destitute after their father’s death, the sisters are forced to navigate societal rules, and weigh the financial implications, of marriage. Elinor suppresses her attraction to Edward while Marianne falls for the unscrupulous Willoughby, all while surrounded by an incessant rumour mill.
The other actors not only play some of the novel’s better known characters, but also take on the role of Gossips. Together, Peake says, they form a Greek-like chorus that frames and comments on the story.
“So they are world builders,” Peake explains. “They're able to break the fourth wall so they can speak to the audience directly. And they are a way for the audience to enter into the work. They're often watching scenes—they manipulate things that are happening in the scene.
“Kate Hamill has a great stage direction at the beginning that says that, at this time, gossip is the lifeblood, the social structure and pastime and national sports and destiny,” Peake continues. “The Gossips are oppressive, but not necessarily unfriendly.”
Peake goes on to explain that the chorus personifies and emphasizes the impact of gossip in a way that still resonates in 2023.
“The way that gossip pressures the characters into making certain decisions or it forces a response after something has happens—it really gives that power into human form,” she stresses. “And, certainly for myself, it definitely makes me look at the way I engage in gossip—whether that's personal gossip or tabloid gossip about people that we don't know, famous people, and the way that we consume that. And at the same time, of course, we see the fun of it. We see the joy; we see the playfulness of it all as well.”
The characters inhabit a world where the set and action are constantly moving, and so are the bodies—the physical theatre action, particularly that of the Gossips, choreographed here by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg.
With that modern momentum, the production aims to connect Austen’s flawed and fully fleshed-out women of two centuries ago with those in contemporary times.
“Kate Hamill is definitely drawing things straight out of the book and it's definitely about language,” the director explains, “but we aren't using English accents. It’s this idea of making it feel immediate, making it feel present to us as Canadians—that there isn't that barrier of an accent to separate us from what's going on or to set set us free of implication. Because, you know, because it is there. Our lives are implied in what they're doing.”
Related Articles
