Thurs 1st August - 7:30 Performance
Chatsworth House -
£15 Ticket, £3 Programme
This show was sold as being in the Chatsworth House Gardens, whilst this was technically true it is pretty much irrelevant as they did not use their location to their advantage.
Chatsworth House
is said to be the inspiration behind Austin's Pemberley manor and it was used in the filming of the
BBC version (1995), so the location makes complete sense as part of a tour celebrating 200 years of the text. Knowing this and the way it was publicised myself and two friends went along expecting something of a site specific performance i.e. integration of the gardens and/or the house into the performance however we were very much disappointed. The show was instead set on a TINY stage with a fixed set which in and/of itself wouldn't be enough to turn this show into the complete and utter boring and unimaginative failure it was.
Adding to the disappointment of not even vaguely using the gardens was the fact that the show was WAAAAY over-booked for what the stage size would have acceptably allowed. From where we were sitting it was very nearly impossible to tell the difference between the Bennet sisters let alone catch any sort of nuances of facial expressions or body movement (though this may have also been a fault of the actors as well). Our view was bad enough without even considering the fact that people are rude and inconsiderate enough to set up camping chairs directly in front of where people are using picnic blankets without even checking they weren't obscuring peoples views (there was reserved for picnic blanket space but this was full very quickly as they had well oversold).
I went knowing full well that the story was not a leap out and grab you one or even within my general field of interest but having seen and enjoyed the BBC version I knew that the text had the potential to be enjoyable. The acting was quite flat and in some cases wooden. It felt as though they expected the for want of a better word setting (as they didn't put it to use at all) to make up for the need to act. Mr Darcy was so wooden his pronouncement of love for Lizzie was severely stilted and felt as though he barely understood what he was saying let alone feeling it. The only characters which stood out were Mrs Bennet and Mr Collins who are such obvious archetypal characters that it is hard not to show character with them. Adding to this was the fact that almost ever actor was playing multiple roles which with the fixed set made it impossible to tell where they were/who they were meant to be at the time.
All in all the show was so disappointing that we left at intermission and we certainly were not the first ones to be doing so (people were leaving throughout the whole first act). While I felt dirty doing so, the show and how severely it undershot its potential made us so angry that we really couldn't bear to stay around for the second half.
Now here are several things I think could have been used to improve this performance (though these are purely my speculations):
* Cut the audience size down to, at max, a third of the size it was and put on at least three performances to counteract this; this enables a much more personal and intimate experience allowing the audience to actually see the actors and their movements etc. to greater effect
* Add some lights; you already have things staked into the ground so why not have little lanterns on top to create a bit more atmosphere?
* Use the beautiful surroundings; Chatsworth Gardens are beautiful, so put this to use by integrating it into the performance for example you could use the rose hedge garden-y bit near the house for any "outdoor" scenes and the space in front for "indoor" scenes
*OR you could have different parts of the garden set up as different locations i.e Pemberley, London, Longbourne whilst this would require the audience to move (would need to be advertised appropriately), this would essentially fill the role of traditional scene changes and enable full use of the gardens as well as setting up for a ball scene at Pemberley whilst the audience is at Longbourne
* Taking this further you could use the house; there are large ballroom-esque rooms use them! By having the audience move out through one entrance and in another utilizing different rooms you could differentiate between Pemberley and Longbourne
* Do AWAY WITH THE DOUBLING; Scenes which are meant to be high society balls would be greatly enhanced by having more than 8 actors to dance/participate at them
* WHERE WERE THE AWESOME HUGE DRESSES; you know the ones which are so large it is difficult to manoeuvre in them, surely these would have been warn to such balls? Whilst studying Hedda Gabla (I think it was Hedda) we discovered how much these sorts of dresses influence movement and character as well as how much could be displayed using a hand fan.
So yeah someone let the ball drop on this production. However despite the low quality of the "entertainment" I had an absolutely lovely evening, thanks to picnic-ing with friends, fun conversation and being able to discuss and rant about how things could have been better after.
