★★★★☆
No bonnets or breeches, no tinkling teacups, no flounces or fuss: this literary adaptation busts open the bodice of the original, thrillingly liberating its subversive spirit. Jeff James and James Yeatman’s radical take on Jane Austen’s final completed novel is sparklingly intelligent and very funny.
All of Austen’s acerbic criticism of Georgian strictures of class, cash and gender remains intact. Yet James and Yeatman also emphasise how much the author remains our contemporary: the pressure to conform, the search for fulfilment, the ludicrous indignities of our mating rituals — these we instantly recognise. There’s also a sharp appraisal of the story itself — and of all the rom-com narratives we consume in which a wedding represents a simplistic happy ending.
The cast wear up-to-the-minute athleisure fashions and speak in a mix of formal period constructions and sweary modernity. The soundtrack, by Ben and Max Ringham, features throbbing electro as well as tracks by Robyn, Nicki Minaj and Frank Ocean. James stages his production on a glowing, white oblong platform. It revolves unnervingly each time Anne Elliot (Lara Rossi) encounters Captain Wentworth (Samuel Edward-Cook), her emotional world tilting dizzyingly on its axis. Engaged to Wentworth eight years earlier, Anne was persuaded to break it off because his career prospects and finances seemed uncertain. She’s still hopelessly in love and tormented with regret.
As Wentworth and Anne work their agonised way back to one another, the other characters swirl around them, absorbed in their own elaborate dances of desire, sexual display and desperation. The furious misery of Helen Cripps as Mary, Anne’s married sister who’s stifled in domesticity, contrasts hilariously with the exuberance of Mary’s young sisters-in-law, Henrietta and Louisa. As played by Caroline Moroney and Cassie Layton, they are pouty, permanently Instagram-ready and bursting with adolescent attitude.
When resolution arrives, it’s joltingly powerful — hard-won, clear-sighted, with Anne and Wentworth facing a future as equals and without guarantees. This is a fantastically satisfying interpretation of the novel, the more brilliantly illuminating for its audacity. I suspect Austen would have loved it.
Box office: 0161 833 9833, to June 24