“If life is not all about bonnets, what is it all about?” asks Victoria Brazier’s Mrs Bennet, trying – and generally failing – to suppress her Yorkshire vowels to appear grander than she is. It sounds like an advert for anodyne costume drama, but her point is a whole lot weightier than that. If any of her daughters are to prosper, she reasons, they must look the part. In her mind, bonnets symbolise wealth – and wealth is what life is all about.
Jane Austen’s novel, as well as being the greatest of love stories and a wry comedy of manners, is a steely-eyed analysis of the power of money. The bonnets are removed early in Conrad Nelson’s production, but the individually patterned blue-green frocks designed by Jessica Curtis – pretty but modest – remind us that the Bennets are more aspirational than rich. Their every move is determined by money.
Which, in Deborah McAndrew’s brisk and witty adaptation, makes it all the more difficult for Suzanne Ahmet’s Elizabeth to stay true to her values. She wants to put personal fulfilment above financial security. Faced by her suitors, she stands firm; charming but to the point. She is funnier than Perry Moore’s buttoned-up Mr Darcy and wiser than the same actor’s preening Mr Collins. She makes us believe her independence of mind is worth fighting for.
Ahmet is the glue that holds the production together, but this is an ensemble show in which all the actors respond to the outdoor setting with a breezy sense of fun. With Howard Chadwick fielded as a grotesque Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the audience doubling as portraits in a stately home and the cast repeatedly breaking into song, it is as playful as it is romantic.
Grosvenor Park Open Air theatre, Chester, until 30 August.
