Lifeline Theatre’s adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” delivers a staid portrait of polite but cutthroat Victorian society. Actors offer strong character work that frames the race for Lizzy’s mother to find her daughter a husband in a pretty yet confined box of social restraint. Jane Austen died a single, poor woman of forty-one after being turned down by a suitor due to her own lack of dowry; you can’t but wonder what would happen if Lizzy told the repressed Mr. Darcy to take a hike and created her own possibilities. Alas, this is nineteenth-century England, not Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan, and the whole point is to sit back and enjoy Austen’s witty use of the English language. Perfect comic timing from Cameron Feagin as Mrs. Bennet and Jan Sodaro as Mrs. Gardiner/Lady Catherine keep the laughs rolling and prevent the show from being mired in passive-aggressive English gentility. (Marla Seidell)
Lifeline Theatre, 6912 North Glenwood, (773)761-4477, lifelinetheatre.com. Thursday and Friday, 7:30 pm; Saturday, 4pm and 8pm; Sunday, 4pm. Through June 10.
Theater Top 5: June 2020 The Windy City continues to find creative ways of bringing the performing arts directly to audiences, not so much blowing in the wind as swinging for the fences.
Lifeline Theatre’s adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” delivers a staid portrait of polite but cutthroat Victorian society. Actors offer strong character work that frames the race for Lizzy’s mother to find her daughter a husband in a pretty yet confined box of social restraint. Jane Austen died a single, poor woman of forty-one after being turned down by a suitor due to her own lack of dowry; you can’t but wonder what would happen if Lizzy told the repressed Mr. Darcy to take a hike and created her own possibilities. Alas, this is nineteenth-century England, not Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan, and the whole point is to sit back and enjoy Austen’s witty use of the English language. Perfect comic timing from Cameron Feagin as Mrs. Bennet and Jan Sodaro as Mrs. Gardiner/Lady Catherine keep the laughs rolling and prevent the show from being mired in passive-aggressive English gentility. (Marla Seidell)
