{"id":2425,"date":"2018-06-05T19:24:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T17:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2018-06-05T20:34:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T18:34:30","slug":"not-entirely-persuaded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/?p=2425","title":{"rendered":"Not entirely Persuaded"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The chance to see a stage adaptation of Persuasion in the very town where a crucial scene is set and where Jane Austen herself stayed, had me booking tickets straightaway. Once again, it was time to visit the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis, or as it\u2019s known, \u2018the little theatre by the sea.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Persuasion is my favourite of Jane Austen\u2019s novels. As I\u2019ve got older, arrogant Mr Darcy has lost his appeal somewhat. Pride and Prejudice has been relegated to second place, although remains close to my heart (and I still want to be Elizabeth when I grow up). In later years I\u2019ve turned to this posthumously published book. With its melancholic, tender romance, this autumnal story calls out to me. It helps that it\u2019s partly set in Lyme Regis and \u2018everyone is wild\u2019 to see the town. And why wouldn\u2019t they be?<\/p>\n

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So, when Theatre6 brought a stage adaptation along, I jumped at the chance to see it.<\/p>\n

The company valiantly battled the Marine\u2019s tiny stage and a small cast of six did their best to portray the vast army of characters in the original book. The actors were astonishingly talented and acted, sang, played a multitude of instruments and danced \u2013 well, you can\u2019t have Austen without a bit of dancing, can you? The superficial and foppish Sir Walter was there, along with his daughters, the snobbish Elizabeth, the hypochondriac Mary and loyal, put upon Anne. Ah, Anne. \u2018None so capable as Anne.\u2019 A quieter heroine than Darcy\u2019s Elizabeth but one you root for and feel her every suffering.<\/p>\n

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The Naval talk was there, with Mrs Croft defending a woman\u2019s right to be at sea and the flirting and match making was also present. A touring company needs to travel light and the limited scenery served as Kellynch Hall, the delights of Bath and the Lyme Regis seaside. Props were equally sparse. Bath is notoriously rainy now and seemed to have been so in Regency Times too. Parasols doubled as umbrellas in the memorable scene in Molland\u2019s, when Wentworth witnesses how solicitous her cousin is of Anne \u2013 and which can mean only one thing in Regency Society. Their use as wheels for a carriage worked less well. It bestowed an unwanted comic feel to the poignant scene when Anne and Wentworth return from Lyme. It should have been loaded with unspoken love and regret, full of a sense of them trying to reach out\u00a0wordlessly to each other. Instead we were treated to parasol twirling and actors bumping their bottoms up and down.<\/p>\n

In parts, it was as successful as any screen adaptation and you couldn\u2019t fault the effort made. It was moving and truly thrilling\u00a0to hear Wentworth\u2019s iconic words, \u2018You pierce my soul,\u2019 spoken in the town where much of the book is set and which has a close connection to the author. There was a lot of lovely music, beautifully played live but which didn\u2019t add a great deal. It was sometimes difficult to differentiate which male character had come on stage as, necessarily, costume changes were minimal and there was little difference in characterisation. Production costs showed, in the bleak staging and limited costumes.<\/p>\n

Overall, although I enjoyed it, it didn\u2019t totally work. It lacked the quietness of the novel, the subtlety, the tenderness and yearning. It\u2019s back to the book for me, or maybe the classic BBC TV version.<\/p>\n

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(PS If you want to read about another stage version of Persuasion being put on in a seaside theatre, uncannily similar to the Marine, try Summer Loves in the Millie Vanilla series).<\/p>\n

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Love,<\/p>\n

Georgia x<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The chance to see a stage adaptation of Persuasion in the very town where a crucial scene is set and where Jane Austen herself stayed, had me booking tickets straightaway. Once again, it was time to visit the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis, or as it\u2019s known, \u2018the little theatre by the sea.\u2019 Persuasion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,39,64,619,652,60,740],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-georgia-hill","tag-jane-austen","tag-lyme-regis","tag-marine-theatre","tag-millie-vanilla-summer-loves","tag-persuasion","tag-theatre6"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2425"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2440,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2425\/revisions\/2440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}