Vital Spark Theatre expands on a Jane Austen plot in The Watsons, May 2 to 18

Playwright Laura Wade picks up where Austen’s novel about 19-year-old Emma Watson’s love life left off

Vital Spark Theatre presents Laura Wade’s The Watsons, which explores what happens when a writer loses the plot, at the Jericho Arts Centre from May 2 to 18.

Emma Watson, who’s 19 and new in town, has been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. She and her sisters must marry fast—if not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse, an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife. While there are plenty of potential suitors for the girls to dance with, there’s one small problem: Jane Austen didn’t finish the story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now?

Directed by Joan Bryans and based on Austen’s incomplete novel of the same name, The Watsons is a sparklingly witty play that asks what characters can do when their author abandons them.

Tickets to the production’s North American premiere are available through Vital Spark Theatre.

Post sponsored by Vital Spark Theatre.

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