Tag Archives: Cole Thompson

“Austen’s Pride” Also Captures Austen’s Heart – and Ours

**Review: Austen’s Pride at Knight Theater**

By Perry Tannenbaum

Depending on how well you adapt Jane Austen’s most beloved novel, Pride and Prejudice,the result on stage or screen can range from Hallmark saccharine to comedy grandeur. At their best, adaptations of recognized classics revel in their new media, rivaling Fiddler on the Roof onstage, High Society onscreen, or Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at the opera house.

Results with P&P largely reflect how deeply a screenwriter or a playwright savors the perfections and delights of Austen’s narrative, dialogue, and wit… and how well he or she channels and tweaks the author’s temperament. What’s most daunting in 2025, more than two centuries after Pride and Prejudice was first published, is the sheer number of adaptations, good and bad, that already exist.

Back in the world of books, a welter of variants and sequels to Pride and Prejudice flourishes, from Austen copycats to audacious apostates who lavish fresh condiments, such as vampires and zombies, onto the original. Onstage and in musicals, the onslaught hasn’t been so fierce, but new acolytes have plenty of TV versions – around 25 – strewn onto their path to Broadway, which most recently had a musical based on the Austen classic, First Impressions, in 1959.

To their credit, Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs took a different path to retelling Pride and Prejudice in their new musical, AUSTEN’S PRIDE. Their visionary concept has Austen, prodded by her sister Cassandra, rewriting an earlier draft from years before, titled First Impressions, and turning it into her beloved chef d’oeuvre right before our eyes.

Recast into a theatrical idiom, with Austen’s characters also offering their input, the musical plays like the rehearsals and development of a new stage work. Austen, vivaciously played by Olivia Hernandez at the Knight Theater in Charlotte, becomes an active, sometimes hyperactive collaborator with characters onstage, like a director or a playwright with her players.

Since Baker & Jacobs have ordained that Austen herself evolves and develops during the process as much as the story itself, Austen supplants her sassy and superb Elizabeth Bennet as our protagonist. Or does she? Behind the scenes, director Igor Goldin decides how much time Hernandez spends onstage in close proximity with Delphi Borich as Elizabeth – and how often she will upstage her by reacting.

Hernandez gets a vast catalog of reactions to call upon: various smiles, gasps, and interactions with Austen’s manuscript, whether it’s jotting things down, feverishly crossing things out, or just pondering, hesitating, and deciding. It’s easy to become captivated with Hernandez’s full repertoire – and to welcome reprises of her greatest hits – but, churlish as it might be to say it, Goldin should be holding her back more than he is.

If you happen to love Austen’s masterwork, Hernandez’s presence infuses her creators’ concept with surprising magic. Example: as she stalked the big proposal scene in Act 1, where Darcy and Elizabeth approach each other from opposite wings, I found myself sobbing before their impassioned dialogue even began. Somebody on the Knight Theater stage seemed to be sharing my reverence for what was about to happen.

While Hernandez becomes a wee bit repetitious, we could definitely benefit from seeing a more fine-grained development of Borich’s evolution as Elizabeth from wit to wisdom. That would push back a little on Baker & Jacobs’ intentions, true enough, but it would also narrow the gap between the ceilings they have placed on Borich’s and Hernandez’s performances. Fine as Borich is in navigating Elizabeth’s misperceptions and epiphanies, Hernandez is diva class, exactly right for a midlife Austen seeing herself as a brilliant young Elizabeth in her rearview mirror, more beguiling but less mature.

Without pedantry, Elizabeth is teaching Austen while the author does the hard work: crafting Elizabeth and her world. Austen’s yearnings, worries, and epiphanies all get more urgency from Baker & Jacobs and more power from Hernadez’s glorious larynx. Her best notes pierce our hearts more than our ears.

Some of Pride’s impact derives directly from Austen’s text: the language of Elizabeth’s letters, the dialogue of Mr. Darcy’s first and second marriage proposals, and the most memorable snippets from Mom and Dad. But some of the deftness that Baker & Jacobs bring to the task of distilling the triple plot of P&P for the stage is discernible in the music they make together.

They bring out Kevyn Morrow as Mr. Bennet more than we expect in a musical with “Silly Girls,” a conspicuously Tevye-the-Dairyman moment, and they give Dan Hoy extended play as Fitzwilliam Darcy at precisely the right moments. Hoy not only finds the nuances of the nobleman’s arrogance and humanity with admirable exactitude, he reminds us that this role – and that of Heathcliffe – were deemed by Hollywood to be the rightful property of Laurence Olivier.

Yet there are elements of Austen’s Pride that are laudably free of pretension, leaning away from Broadway glitz toward chamber-music decorum and perfection. The pit band at this Knight Theatre production numbers only nine players, including music director Kerianne Brennan at one of the keyboards.

Scenery by Josh Zangen is equally elegant and spare. Windows in Austen’s study, accented simply with glowing potted flowers, fly upwards when we transition to her novel-in-progress. When we need to conjure up the splendor of Bingley’s Netherfield estate, a chandelier drops down to simulate his glittery ballroom.

Emily Rebholz not only makes Darcy and the dudes manly with her costume designs, she also distinguishes beautifully between the decorous Bennet sisters and the more matronly/professional Austens. When Kate Fahey, as the frivolous and flirtatious Lydia Bennet, attempts to tempt Darcy’s longtime acquaintance, dashing militiaman George Wickham, only four more redcoats need to be sewn to conjure up his regiment for “I Can’t Resist a Redcoat.”

The frilliest Rebholz creations are reserved for Austen’s most high-strung women, Elizabeth’s irrepressibly vulgar and mercenary mom and Lady Catherine de Bough, Mr. Darcy’s imperious aunt. Sally Wilfert makes a hearty meal of both of these delicious witches, as marmoreal and severe as Lady C as she is fidgety and flighty as Mrs. B., singing “My Poor Nerves” in her dopier chores.

Three other players fend off idleness by playing multiple roles, helping Rebholz to put further limits on her fittings. When not overshadowed by Lydia as her sister Kitty, Cali Noack transforms into Georgiana, Darcy’s younger sib. After shining as the hilariously awkward and pretentious Mr. Collins – whose marriage proposal to Lizzy must be declined without laughing in his clergyman’s face – Paul Castree radiates the dignity and urbanity of Mr. Gardiner.

Before strutting beside Castree as the decorous Mrs. Gardiner, Sarah Ellis has a couple of more provocative turns, first as Mary Bennet, the most bookish and moralizing of Lizzy’s sisters, and then as Caroline Bingley, notable for her three “My Dearest Jane” cameos to Elizabeth’s long-suffering elder sister – and the eye-popping color of that dress.

Jane isn’t the easiest or plumiest role to play, asking Addie Morales to be both modestly discreet and passionately adoring when Charles Bingley pays her his attentions. Morales tips the balance between these two postures so obviously that her amorousness can no doubt be seen from the balcony. While that does compromise the quality of Darcy’s perceptions on behalf of his friend, Cole Thompson endows Bingley with such wholesome and abundant cluelessness – and such lanky Ichabod Crane ungainliness – that their comedy works nicely.

Although the role is not included on the cast list or the who’s-who bios, Dianica Phelan gives us a fine, albeit brief, portrayal of the pragmatic Charlotte Lucas, who accepts her friend Lizzy’s discard, Mr. Collins, for her husband. Mostly, Phelan portrays Austen’s sister Cassandra. So after joining with Hernandez in “Choices,” the opening duet concerned with how to exhume First Impressions and follow up on the success of Sense and Sensibility, she’s there on two fronts to consider women’s choices in Austen’s life and in her signature novel.

The feminist tang so easy to overlook in Austen’s work gracefully surfaces as these circumscribed choices are doubly aired. While Charlotte and Elizabeth are discussing the merits of marrying for love against marrying for security, their author and her sister, Cassandra, are debating the matter with a little more heat and real-life experience.

That’s one of the reasons Austen’s Pride delivers extra boosts of relevance and drama in Baker & Jacobs’ adaptation, along with its tuneful novelty. This fresh take on Pride and Prejudice, deftly balancing comedy and romance, is ready for primetime and its Broadway aspirations, with room left over for further developing its scenic dimensions and tech adornments.

“Into the Woods” Revival Resuscitates Sondheim’s Heart

**Review: Into the Woods at Blumenthal PAC**

By Perry Tannenbaum

Replete with wit and amazingly intricate rhyme and wordplay, intertwining no less than five fairytales, all brightly sprinkled with pseudo profundity, Steven Sondheim’s INTO THE WOODS has always left me with an aftertaste of being too clever and too cerebral. For me, it’s the polar opposite of The Sound of Music, which always has me worrying whether my glucose reading will spike the following morning. Dreading my next encounter with both of these musicals, I’m invariably surprised by how satisfied I am while I’m still in the hall and their stories unfold.

Until this week, that is, when the touring version of the posthumous 2022 revival of Sondheim’s gem rolled into Charlotte, just a little over three months after closing on Broadway. Directed by Lear deBessonet and bringing a generous bouquet from the Great White Way of players who were in the opening-night and replacement casts, this new INTO THE WOODS, dedicated to Sondheim’s memory and now at Belk Theater, breaks the spell, dispelling the aftertaste of so many local and regional productions I have seen.

Of course, the clever and resourceful meshing of multiple fairytales in Act 1 still delights, but after so many reprises, it doesn’t astonish anymore. No, what knocked me over was the extensive rebalancing and reimagining of Act 2, which had always scored many of its points but had also seemed intent on ruining the magic that Sondheim had crafted before intermission.

In deBessonet’s hands, the emphasis has shifted away from the spurious “children will listen” trope that was so loudly flouted by the strayings of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Jack of “Beanstalk” fame. You may also perceive the connection between “The Last Midnight” sung by the Witch deep into Act 2 with the three midnights she gave the Baker and his Wife before intermission to collect various charms from those more famous fairytale protagonists in order to achieve the couple’s dream of having a child.

With its new emphasis on the “you are not alone” refrain, this journey Into the Woods proves that Sondheim does have a heart – and plenty of it. Tears were already welling up for me as soon as I knew that soothing phrase was about to be sung.

At the center of all this wonder is Montego Glover’s electrifying performance as the Witch. All too often, the defanged and chastened Witch is portrayed as reformed and fundamentally changed after intermission. That impression, a holdover from previous encounters with Sondheim’s Witch, didn’t last long here. Glover is still playing the blame game viciously, maliciously, and fiercely after regaining her youth, pointing her crooked finger at Jack as a surviving She-Giant from above wreaks rampaging vengeance upon the whole kingdom.

Feeling the impact of the Witch’s damage as keenly as her primal yearning for motherhood, Stephanie J. Block as the Baker’s Wife comes fairly close to stealing the show back from Glover. Until Glover’s devastating “Last Midnight” comes along, Block’s “Moments in the Woods” stands as the peak showstopper of the evening, poignant, raunchy, and comical.

Before those powerhouse women take charge, Gavin Creel and Jason Forbach file legitimate claims to sovereignty as the two Princes in their “Agony” duets. Creel clearly drew the juicier royal role, reprising his Broadway turns as Cinderella’s Prince and Riding Hood’s Wolf. So he gets to woo Little Red with “Hello, Little Girl” in Act 1 and the Baker’s Wife with “Any Moment” after intermission. Fortunately for the audience, Creel is as full of himself as Glover.

Sebastian Arcelus, Block’s husband in real life, brings more self-doubt and less smug complacency to the Baker than I’ve seen before, further updating and humanizing the pair. As Jack, Cole Thompson gives us a credulous farmboy who might not be stupid. But the lad definitely needs looking after, and Aymee Garcia as Jack’s Mother gets plenty of free rein for motherly fretting and pragmatic exasperation.

While deBessonet had little leeway in making over Diane Phelan’s modest and wholesome Cinderella and even less with Alysia Velez’s Rapunzel – who sings only a few notes but no words – he allowed Katy Geraghty to go radically bratty as Little Red Riding Hood. With the “children will listen” motif thrown to the wolves, Little Red’s new orneriness works well.

Fans who treasure Sondheim’s braininess still have plenty to savor. With music director John Bell and his orchestra onstage behind the action; and with puppeteers wielding the monstrous feet of the Giant, a golden egg-laying chicken, and Jack’s personable Milky White cow (a mischievous Kennedy Kanagawa); the tension between magic and artifice remains suspended all evening long.

David Patrick Kelly as our Narrator even gets his own rostrum to declaim from as he pipes up every so often to tell our tale, dutifully turning pages as he pretends to read. Kelly’s various turns as the wizened and crouching Mysterious Man, switching from his Wizard of Oz formalwear to filthy rags as he bedevils the Baker, are a recurring treat, one of many, many winking reminders that we’re watching children’s theatre as adults.

Kudos to costume designer Andrea Hood, totally in on the mischief and fun, and puppet maker James Ortiz, whose designs will enchant young and old. Only a small but substantial number of empty seats were visible on Media Night, way up in the back of the second and third balconies. Count them as precious opportunities that were missed.