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by Kate Hamill, directed by Daryl Cloran

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

June 19-October 25, 2025

Gossip 1: “And so the young ladies and their mother are left in such reduced circumstances! How shall the girls ever catch a man?”

This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. The Grand Theatre London has already celebrated with a production Pride and Prejudice adapted for the stage by American actor Kate Hamill. Stratford is now celebrating with Sense and Sensibility also adapted by Hamill. Having viewed both productions one can see that Hamill labours under the pernicious notion that Austen’s novels are not funny enough for a modern audience and need to be goosed up. The problem is that Hamill’s notion of making Austen funnier is to dumb the stories down and make the characters cartoonish – just the opposite of the subtle satire and psychological insight Austen is known for. Why the Grand and Stratford should have chosen Hamill as their adaptor is a mystery. Anyone who loves Austen will have to find other ways to celebrate the great author than seeing an adulteration of her novel.

Sense and Sensibility is based on Austen’s 1811 novel of the same name. It focusses on the lives of two sisters, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood. After the death of their father, John, Mr. Dashwood’s son by his first wife, inherits all his property. Although he promised to look after his stepmother and sisters, John, under the malevolent influence of his wife Fanny, decides not to give them an annuity and only to help them move out of the family home in Sussex to a cottage owned by a cousin in Devonshire.

The main question of the novel is how, in a time when marriages were still primarily financial transactions, Marianne and Elinor, thus impoverished, will ever manage to find suitable husbands. Much to Fanny’s dismay, her brother Edward is attracted to Elinor as soon as he meets her. Marianne attracts the attention of the Middletons’ friend Colonel Brandon, but Marianne, aged 16, thinks that he at age 35 is far too old. When Marianne twists her ankle when out walking in the rain, she is rescued by the dashing Mr. Willoughby, who seems to have all the same likes as Marianne besides filling the role in her fancy of a romantic hero.

The parallel relationships seem to progress well for a time, Marianne even coming to believe she is engaged to Willoughby, when both men suddenly become standoffish. As we discover, both men have secrets that comprise their relationships with the sisters and for a time all looks hopeless when both sisters feel they have lost the only men they ever loved. Whether things will ever work out and how become the main engines driving the plot.

As is the case with Austen’s other novels, Sense and Sensibility is a critique of a society that makes women dependent on men for security in life. The novel is also a subtle psychological comedy where the practical Elinor comes to suffer from a romantic love and the romantic Marianne comes to appreciate the value of a practical man.

Sadly, for anyone who loves the subtlety of Jane Austen, Hamill’s adaptation has nothing subtle about it. This is apparent right from the start when Hamill begins the play with a chorus of five Gossips. The chorus announces events and changes of time and location, but it mostly comments on the action from the point of view of high society. This is rather bizarre since the Dashwoods, impoverished and living in a cottage let from a relative, are about as far from high society as one can be. Who knows why Hamill should choose a chorus of Gossips for this novel. The word “gossip” is used only twice in the entire novel and both times in reference only to Mrs. Jennings’ maid.

Furthermore, designer Dana Osborne has dressed the chorus in gaudy, exaggerated versions of early 19th-century clothing, one man wearing a too-tall top hat and another wearing a full-dress bicorne. Add to this the fact that the chorus speaks in an upper-class British accent unlike any found in reality, and Hamill and Cloran give us a constant irritant from beginning to end. The chorus’s constant striving to make the action funnier has the opposite effect by striking a note of hyperbole that soon becomes tiresome.

The chorus not only play people but dogs, portraits, coaches, the weather and one time one plays a horse. Both times when animals are involved, they are so distracting all characters’ dialogue goes unheard.

During the Chorus’s first gossip session, the body of the deceased Mr. Dashwood drops from a great height onto the table on stage. If anyone had any doubts this is the definitive signal that Hamill has no intention of taking Austen’s story seriously. Why else make fun of the event that causes the Dashwoods’ misery?

While Hamill is responsible for the annoying Chorus, Cloran himself has made his own grating choices as director. Osborne’s prime decoration of the Festival stage is a collection of empty picture frames. Two picture frames are door-sized and on wheels. In a baffling move, Cloran has the cast treat the two frames as doors and open and close them to enter or leave a room. Yet, in the same scene he will have characters walk through the frames or walk through the walls where the doors supposedly have been set. I assume that Cloran thinks that disregarding the principles of mime is funny, but it makes movement throughout the entire show look haphazard. Cloran’s use of chairs on wheels where characters can propel themselves across the stage is yet another signal that we are not meant to take anything on stage seriously.

Given all the foolishness that Hamill has built into her adaptation and that Cloran has amplified, it is surprising that we become involved in the action at all. Fortunately, Hamill has left the most essential scenes of the novel untouched, and the actors are so good that they take these few chances to interest us in the characters’ interactions. Three actors really carry the story and we focus on them as we try to shut out the surrounding nonsense. They are Jessica B. Hill as Elinor, Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane as Marianne and Thomas Duplessie as Edward Ferrars. These three manage to focus our attention on the essence of Austen’s novel as a comedy of character. Hill and Sinclair-Brisbane are very believable as sisters who are close but who approach life from opposing points of view – Elinor as a pragmatist, Marianne as a romantic. Both speak clearly and without exaggeration, capturing all the nuances of sympathy, happiness and despair as their characters experience the ups and downs of life.

This is Duplessie’s third season at Stratford but the first time he has had a major role. He is a real find. The humour he finds in Edward’s constant awkwardness and embarrassment is all too relatable and a delight throughout. Duplessie also briefly plays Edward’s foolish brother Robert, whom he manages to make appear even more socially inept than Edward.

Jade V. Robinson plays Margaret, the youngest of the Dashwood sisters, and Lucy Steele, who claims she already has won Edward’s affection. Hamill’s text and Cloran’s direction conspire to take Margaret over the top all the time with the result that Magaret is the least believable of the three sisters. As Lucy, however, Robinson brings out all the malice that the young woman hides beneath a façade of politeness.

Andrew Chown plays both John Dashwood, step-brother to Elinor and Marianne, and Mr. Willoughby, the gallant who seems smitten with Marianne. He is excellent as John, a weak man who is ready to submit to his wife rather than uphold a promise to his family. As Willoughby, however, is a rather over-emphatic, a trait which immediately arouses suspicion which we really should not entertain until later on in the story. Sara Farb makes a frighteningly icy Fanny, John’s wife, a woman who cares only about herself and her social status. Farb also plays Lady Middleton, a role so small one wonders why Hamill even includes it.

Glynnis Ranney plays Mrs. Dashwood as a kind but ineffectual woman. She also plays Lucy Steele’s sister Anne. The role is meant to be funny but Hamill has written in so poorly that Ranney can’t really make much sense of it. Seana McKenna makes Mrs. Jennings a welcoming, big-hearted woman which is a great contrast to her portrayal of the crabbed, murmuring Mrs. Ferrars, whom Hamill suggests could just as well be played by a puppet. Shane Carty brings out the humanity and common decency in Colonel Brandon, an unwavering characteristic that we, like Marianne, do not sufficiently appreciate until late in the action.

Christopher Allen, Jenna-Lee Hyde, Celia Aloma, Jesse Gervais and Julie Lumsden play the Gossips. Under Julie Tomaino’s direction their movement is fluid and precise, and they all speak in the same bizarre accent which Cloran has chosen. But since they have done much better work individually elsewhere, it’s a pity to see them grouped together to fulfil a role in Hamill’s concept that is both unnecessary and unhelpful.

Some people may love Jane Austen so much they will wish to see her first novel on stage. I fear that any true fans will find Hamill’s flippant attitude toward the material off-putting. The production comes off more as a parody of Jane Austen than the real thing. Austen fans would do much better celebrating their author’s anniversary by rereading the novel or by rewatching the much-loved 1995 film adaptation scripted by Emma Thompson.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: The Chorus of Gossips, i.e., Julie Lumsden, Jenna-Lee Hyde, Christopher Allen, Jesse Gervais and Celia Aloma; Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane as Marianne and Jessica B. Hill as Elinor; Seana McKenna as Mrs. Jennings, Thomas Duplessie as Edward, Jessica B. Hill as Elinor. © 2025 David Hou.

For tickets visit: www.stratfordfestival.ca