PRIDE & PREJUDICE* (*sort of)
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE* (*sort of), Gooding Productions at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 18 July-30 August 2026. Photography by Prudence Upton
Isobel McArthur’s Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) is a sort of musical (fragments of pop hits) and a sort of homage to Jane Austen’s most loved novel. The show won 2022’s Olivier Award in the sort-of odds-and-sods category, Best Entertainment or Comedy Play.
The nominees that year were fellow Edinburgh Fringe successes The Choir of Man (set in a pub with lots of jigs and begorras and toured here), and The Shark is Broken (strife on the Jaws set when the mechanical Carcharodon carcharias conked out), together with Pantoland at the Palladium featuring Donny Osmond and Julian Clary in a sort of Christmas panto.
You can see how P&P* (*sort of) shone. And it’s an entertaining idea: do an Upstairs Downstairs meets Downton Abbey and Bridgerton on the Bennet family – put the servants in the driving seat of the phaeton and let her rip.
There are genuinely brilliant moments of clever scripting, silly jokes, and raucous comedy, but at two hours plus interval, there’s room for cutting and polishing that even a company as committed and talented as this one can’t quite disguise. The five are, in A-Z order: Amy Lehpamer, Kaori Maeda Judge, Ruby Shannon, Teo Vergara, and Zoe Ioannou. And they deserve 100 minutes straight through with less of the book and more droll exposition from below stairs.
Nevertheless, the performers are captivating. Musical theatre star Amy Lehpamer leads the group, switching in a blink between Charlotte Lucas (here tragically in love with bestie Miss Elizabeth), as well as the gently debonair Mr Bingley, and his dreadful snoot of a sister Miss Bingley. And, of course, Lehpamer can effortlessly take a tune about the room: can she sing!
Then there’s newcomer Ruby Shannon, who delivers contrasting sisters, serious Mary and ditzy Lydia Bennet, as well as odious dweeb, the Rev Mr Collins. Her just reward is the closing song, and she’s a revelation. Adding a lively dissimilarity is Zoe Ioannou and her opposite pole roles of Mrs Bennet and her nerves, and smouldering emotional ruin hero Mr Darcy. He’s also the source of the evening’s best joke – about a wet shirt. Although there is a horse, and Mr Bennet’s newspaper.
Kaori Maeda-Judge presents an excellent twofer as oleaginous charmer George Wickham, while her Lady Catherine de Bourgh redefines arrogance and entitlement. Central to the drama is Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and when not servanting, Teo Vergara is the epitome of the intelligent, courageous young woman whose resistance to the marriage market is supposed to doom her to spinsterhood. Her interactions with Mr Darcy, however, would tell even the least acquainted with Austen that something steamy is brewing.
With the Downstairs mob observing and commenting on the Upstairs lot while being one and the same, lightning-fast costume changes, entrances, and exits are flawlessly handled with a magician’s sleight of hand (and body). All stemming from the creative team of Ana Inés Jabares-Pita (set and costumes), Jason Bovaird (lighting), choreographer Simone Sault, and director Simon Harvey (who’s squired the show around the UK, West End and beyond).
The sound (on opening night) was another matter. The show demands a meld of recorded music, sung and spoken vocals, as well as individual hand-held and headset mics, not forgetting Lehpamer’s violin, and the upright piano. The synchronisation was seamless, but the sound level seemed stuck at the top end of treble, with imperceptible bass or balance, and no differentiation between singing and speaking. When it involved Mrs Bennet’s hysterical vapours, after Lydia elopes with the cad Wickham, plus the many other aurally emotional moments, the racket was enough to make my ears bleed (and I used to hang out with a Motörhead roadie.) Luckily, there was respite from time to time.
Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) is a lot of sort-ofs and never quite vastly, tremendously, or exceedingly. Nevertheless, its audience loves it, and we have to remember the whole point of P&P, as Miss Austen wryly observed, “Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.” So there.
