Review: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY at Guthrie Theater

The Guthrie's well cast, wittily directed, beautifully costumed production of a new adaptation of one of Jane Austen's beloved novels is a delightful concoction, firmly set in period but updated to our time in terms of thematic emphasis. This upbeat show is well worth a visit, even if you are someone who finds the marriage plot kind of a yawner, usually.

The question of whether the Dashwood sisters can find suitable husbands who they actually love (once delivered to destitution by the sudden death of their father and a heartless reading of his wishes by their rather spineless brother) still centers the plot. But the emphasis here is far more on the relationship between the two sisters of marriageable age than on the romances. Elinor, the elder, played with charm and restraint by the excellent Jolly Abraham, represents sense: she keeps her head, and she does her best to make decisions based on reason. Her younger sister Marianne, the lively and likeable Alejandra Escalante, is a much more overtly passionate spirit who leads with her heart, thus representing sensibility. In this adaptation, we first meet an animated Marianne as she directs a stolid suitor in a dramatic reading of HAMLET.

There is a third Dashwood sister, who is 13 in the novel, but is played here as somewhat younger: young enough to be quite free-spirited yet, and thus far less constrained by the era's rigid conventions about ladylike behavior. (At the Guthrie, Isadora Swann and Natalie Tran alternate in carrying this spunky role, and have quite a bit of expressive mime to execute.)

This shift is just one of the ways that this adaptation, by the young actor/playwright Kate Hamill, propels the 1811 novel into present-day discussions of girls, voice, and female-centric stories. Hamill (who originated the role of Marianne in an acclaimed off-Broadway production of her script) is explicit that she intends this adaptation to pass the Bechdel test: that is, that it should include at least two named female characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. Her SENSE AND SENSIBILITY has enjoyed a major production in Dallas and is opening the season at the Folger in Washington, DC, as well as at the Guthrie. She has also authored a new adaptation of Vanity Fair, slated to open in New York in March of 2017.

A device Hamill employs to great effect is a chatty Greek-style chorus of Gossips, played at various moments by seven different actors who all carry other roles as well. Their brief, intermittent appearances keep the cost of flouting social norms visible throughout, while also adding in some comic touches, like the yipping of small, invisible dogs.

Director Sarah Rasmussen is making her Guthrie debut with this show, though she's got a considerable track record at other major regional theaters, headed up the M.F.A. Directing program at UT Austin for a time, and serves now as the Artistic Director at Minneapolis' Jungle Theater. Her direction here is both clever and brisk. The show begins with a bang, literally, as pallbearers drop the shrouded body of the Dashwood dad on the table center stage. That table sits atop a beautiful circular wooden inlaid floor by scenic designer Junghyun Georgia Lee. Dual turntables in that floor permit unconventional theatrical stagings of both dinner scenes and travel sequences, eliminating all the fussiness that can so drag down the pace in period pieces like this one. But the period remains ever clear to us, thanks to beautifully detailed costumes by Moria Sine Clinton.

This production is fun to watch, and elicited hearty laughs from the audience several times during the show I saw. It's great to see all the theater arts woven together so skillfully to bring one of the early English novels to new viewers with humor and a deft feminist touch. Running under 2½ hours including intermission, this show would work for middle schoolers on up.

Photo credit: Dan Norman

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