Book and Lyrics: Jeffrey Haddow
Music: Neal Hampton
Director: Alexandra Cowell
At first glance, a chamber musical setting should be perfect for Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen’s first published novel. While TV and movie adaptations tend to favour sweeping views of stately homes, the writer’s stories are much more intimate, constantly dealing with how her characters yearn to be led by the heart but are ever constrained by the wallet.
This production of Jeffry Haddow and Neal Hampton’s adaptation was performed as a full cast production at the Minack Theatre in 2024 but is now reworked here, included as part of the Arcola’s annual Grimeborn festival with a cast of just six. Multi-roling is a prerequisite, of course, and all six also act as the musical’s chorus, using handheld masks to act as anonymised commenters.
But from the outset, the flaws in the rescaling are visible. Not necessarily in the music: Hampton’s score, which revels in that opera-adjacent space so beloved of, say, Lerner and Loewe or Rodgers and Hammerstein, is engaging throughout. But the first scene, in which the ensemble fills us in on the backstory of the Dashwood sisters, is clumsily presented.
The opening number, In Society, is supposed to introduce us to the Regency world inhabited by the Dashwoods. But a static arrangement of actors means that each of the three sides of the audience only gets to hear a third of the story. With actors rooted to the spot, the only choreography is a forced bow every time the word “society” is sung, which is at the end of nearly every line; it’s a forced and uncomfortable movement that may have been helped by the cast agreeing on which beat the bow should be taken.
Matters improve substantially when the story itself gets underway, especially with Rachael Liddell’s stoic Elinor. The tentative affection between her and James Beddoe’s meek Edward is sweetly and delicately rendered. Beside them, Elora Ledger’s Marianne is necessarily contrasting – but there is a fine line between creating a Marianne who is childlike and one who is childish, and this production occasionally forgets to try.
As the musical progresses, the songs continue to impress, as do the performances of them, which is just as well. The book struggles with its slavish recreation of as many beats of the novel as possible. One yearns for another ensemble piece, however poorly staged, which could move the narrative on in a pacier fashion. And yet one occasion where that device is used, to relate a duel on Hampstead Heath between Colonel Dashwood and the dastardly John Willoughby, feels like it robs the musical of a scene that could have provided some dearly needed variety from the flitting between drawing rooms.
Some leaden dialogue deliveries, hastily applied costume changes, and lumpen scene changes further afford this production a sense of village hall amdram that the material does not deserve. Haddow and Hampton cram an awful lot of impressive songs into this two-act production – Elinor’s lullaby Cry Baby Cry, sung to an ill Marianne in Act II, is a particular standout.
But both the book and the performance of it make the two-and-a-half hours of running time feel like more of a chore than any Austen adaptation should ever be. Liddell’s excellent performance and musical director Guy Murgatroyd’s sumptuous three-piece band aside, there is little else to recommend here.
Runs until 23 August 2025
