Writer: Sophie Pell
Director: Nick Delvallé
Sophie Pell’s 45-minute adaptation of Sense and Sensibility may well be renamed Slapstick and Sabotage as two actors play two warring actors playing all the parts in a staging of Jane Austen’s famous novel. Showing at the Etcetera Theatre, Pell’s actual title, Nonsense and Sensibility, essentially describes the two halves of the show as the Austen-Goes-Wrong opener gives way to a largely satisfying and eventually emotionally driven, rather sensible interpretation of the Dashwood sisters. Other than a loose frame, Pell doesn’t use the meta device of abandoned actors to much effect, leaving a question mark over what this new version really wants to say about Austen, about theatre or about the blindness of love.
When the entire cast of Sense and Sensibility quit moments before the evening performance, a wearied director announces that Samantha who usually plays Eleanor and Bartholomew who plays Edward will instead take on all the roles, reworking the show as a two-person play. The only problem is, they also hate each other. With no idea of anyone else’s lines, the pair initially struggles to get through the scenes, but as Austen weaves her magic, the players also come together.
Separating out the surrounding concept featuring Samantha and Bartholomew, the presentation of Austen’s source material with only two actors is managed with some skill, necessitating plenty of entertaining gender swapping, the two performers both having to play the same character at different times and plenty of inventive prop techniques to convey the different individuals in Norland, Barton Cottage and Mrs Jennings’ ball. This compression of locations and cast – with only Eleanor, Marianne, Colonel Brandon, Edward, Willoughby, Mrs Jennings and Lucy Steele carrying the story – is effectively done, with Gareth Balai jumping between three of them in one scene alone.
Pell makes much less use of the frame, however, and while an opening scene between Samantha and Bartholomew sets the tone as they bicker, give each other unpleasant notes and air their egos, the concept is largely forgotten as the story progresses. But Nonsense and Sensibility is missing a trick, an opportunity to mark its place in the many Austen-based stage adaptations on the circuit alongside Austentatious, Being Mr Wickham and The Watsons, inverting the latter by Laura Wade by not letting the characters take over but having the actors ruin their own show to prove a point.
Described by the departing cast as “petty, argumentative and violent,” Pell lets Samantha (Madeline Pell) and Bartholomew fight a little in the early scenes, trying to steal each other’s scripts and undermine the other’s performance. But all of this could be enhanced; making them love each other is rather a waste of a toxic setting, far better to watch them trying to outdo, outperform, and actually oust each other from the show in a variety of ingenious and spontaneous ways that would offer much greater scope for the two performers, as well as drawing their relationship in far greater detail.
But for Pell, the lure of doing a potted version of the real Sense and Sensibility seems too strong when what this needed was a lot more nonsense.
Runs until 22 May 2026
