Rehearsals for Queensland Theatre’s first production for 2025 have been a bit like Bible study. Although it’s not the Holy Bible they have been consulting , it’s another sacred tome – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
The Jane Austen novel, loved by generations, was published in 1813. A classic of English literature, it has never been out of print.
Now co-directors Bridget Boyle and Daniel Evans (the new artistic director of Queensland Theatre) are working with a cast of 12 to bring it to the stage at the Empire Theatre in Toowoomba on February 13 (two shows) and to the Playhouse at QPAC for a season running from February 20 to March 9.
According to Evans, adapting one of literature’s most loved books to the stage is quite a responsibility. Luckily, he happens to have an Austen aficionado as his co-director.
“Bridget is a purist while I’m a bit of an Austen virgin,” he says. “So, I started out by saying, what’s the big deal? Now I just love the book and Austen is so sassy and charming. She’s the mother of romantic comedy.”
Evans confirms that the book is very much in the room at rehearsals.
You might like
“Everyone read the book before we started, then on first day we gave them all a Penguin Classic version,” he says. “It’s our bible in rehearsals. Bridget knows it off by heart and people will recognise lines from the book.
“We asked ourselves what we had to deliver for fans. That’s like coming up with a set list of songs by ABBA or The Beatles. You ask yourself, what are the biggest hits?”
It’s a milestone year for Jane Austen fans as 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of her birth. The global Jane Austen community will be celebrating. In Australia, the word is that fans will be jetting in from interstate for this production, while schools are also booking seats. Evans says 1000 students are already coming.
The book centres on the burgeoning relationship between Elizabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner. It follows the Bennet family, including five very different sisters who encounter eligible bachelors throughout the novel.
The book opens with one of the most famous lines in English literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of wife.” And so, it goes.
The comedy is razor-sharp, the romance is swoon-worthy …
Subscribe for updates
Evans says it’s good to start the QT year with something familiar and funny.
“It’s so joyful and funny, everyone keeps cracking up in rehearsals,” he says. “The comedy is razor-sharp, the romance is swoon-worthy and the characters we all love – and love to hate. Our writers Wendy Mocke and Lewis Treston have made Austen thrillingly contemporary. Yes, the work is set in period but the stakes of the sisters, the plight of romantic love, still reverberates in 2025.”
Boyle says “Pride and Prejudice is the blueprint for romantic comedy and Austen is the reason we have this entire genre”.
The all-Queensland cast features some of the state’s finest actors, led by Andrew Hearle as Mr Darcy and Maddy Burridge as Elizabeth. The cast includes, among others, Bryan Probets, Chenoa Deemal and Amy Ingram.
Burridge loves a period piece and last year toured with QT’s production of Gaslight. She says while there is a contemporary edge to this stage version of the Austen classic, it remains faithful to the text.
“I keep consulting the novel throughout rehearsals,” Burridge says. “Anyone who is a Jane Austen fan will recognise iconic lines,” she says, adding that it is a bit daunting to be tackling a role that has been played on-screen by Greer Garson, Jennifer Ehle and Keira Knightley.
“I can’t play her as Keira Knightley, though,” she says. “I can’t replicate anyone else’s performance.”
So Burridge is doing it her own way, with a little help from holy writ, the book itself. She says rehearsals have been fun and intense and that there is a lot of movement with choreographer and movement director Nerida Matthaei in the house.
“Rehearsals are exhausting,” she says. “But I want to keep coming back to work every day.”
If you haven’t read the book, you’ll be fine, says Evans, although reading it now might be a good idea. You have time. Just.
Pride and Prejudice plays the Empire Theatre, Toowoomba, on February 13, and the Playhouse, QPAC, February 20 to March 9.