As another pro football season has ended, we all rationally know that the Browns will have another chance to win an NFL championship next year. But emotionally, that distance may seem drastically longer, possibly extending into eternity.
Novelist Jane Austen knew a thing or two about the differences between rational thought and emotional receptivity from her own experience as a female writer in late 18th/early 19th century England. Rationally, she understood she was working at a huge cultural and gender deficit so deep, her first published book Sense and Sensibility didn’t even carry her name and instead cited the author as, “By a lady.” But emotionally, she was no doubt seething.
That combination is on full and glorious display in the Great Lakes Theater’s production of Jane’s wonderful Sense and Sensibility, as adapted by Kate Hamill. This is Jane Austen on wheels, literally, as all the furniture glides around the stage on casters, shoved hither and yon by the actors.
The story itself centers on two Dashwood sisters Elinore (Maggie Kettering) and Marianne (Angela Utrera), the former a sensible, grounded lass and the other more spontaneous and emotional. Apart from those two, the other six actors are multi-cast in two to five roles each, including cross-gender. This gives the script, already glossed with the original and elegant Austen verbiage, a swift goose right from the start.
The Dashwood women have been screwed out of their estate since it was passed on to the half-brother, whose scary wife convinced him to throw them out. They have taken up residence in a small house on the property of Sir John Middleton, where the grown sisters get busy trying to find a dude to marry since that’s about the sum-total of their economic prospects. You gotta love the 19th century, right Ron DeSantis?
Elinore is attracted to shy and awkward Edward Ferrars even as she is being courted by the older, stodgy Colonel Brandon. Meanwhile, Marianne has a “meet cute” moment when rakish John Willoughby finds her after she falls on a path and carries her back to her cottage. She is smitten—no, make that fully smote— until she hears he has had other relationships on the burner.
As the plot and the stage furniture wheels and spins, heartbreak follows heartbreak with many comical moments provided by the six other cast members who portray from two to five different characters each, at times changing in the moment with the flip of a hat or the donning of a different coat.
These talented players include Joe Wegner (bashful Edward and hilariously motor-mouthed Mrs. Jennings), Laura Welsh Berg (Willoughby), Hanako Walrath (giddy little Dashwood sister Margaret), Nick Steen (Colonel Brandon), Vilma Silva, and M.A. Taylor. The last five in that list also comprise the Gossips, unnamed entities who always gather when people are sharing secrets, whispering and buzzing about the latest scandalous doings. It’s the old-timey substitute for TMZ, and it works perfectly.
Thanks to the directorial skills of Bruner and Miller, the compression of Austen’s novel won’t detract one whit from your enjoyment of this romp. The experience is further enhanced by Courtney O’Neill’s forced perspective scenic design with period drawings on the walls, Mieka van der Ploeg’s witty costumes, and the lush sound design by Paul James Prendergast.
More than anything, this Sense and Sensibility throbs with life and joy, even with all the heartaches. That makes it a fine and invigorating match for the world we occupy today.
Sense and Sensibility
Through March 5 at Great Lakes Theater, Hanna Theatre, Playhouse Square, 2067 E. 14th Street, 216-241-6000, greatlakestheater.org.
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This article appears in Feb 8-21, 2023.