from BJ Jones, Artistic Director

As we come to the close of our beautiful and moving production of Eclipsed and ready ourselves to present Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility it strikes me that both of these plays have a resonance with each other that is not readily apparent. Eclipsed tells the story of women oppressed by war, abused indeed tortured by circumstance and their oppressors, finding mutual support and resilience in the cocoon of relationships they have built to insulate them against their world.

In Sense & Sensibility, a book written 200 years ago, the subtle oppression, cloaked under a mask of social civility is no less shocking or heart rending. The economic pressure, the class structure, the manipulation between the sexes is both shocking and in the distance of time oddly amusing to us now, when in fact it is just as painful and disgraceful.

But Sense & Sensibility is a play which moves dancelike across the water of the narrative, lifting us up giddily through style and poetry, lightly touching on matters of the heart, and not plunging us deeply into grittier realities.

Jon Jory’s stylish production serves up the froth and playfulness, while we become increasingly aware of the tension between the haves and the have-nots. Balls and crinolines only serve to mask the aching awareness of the life and death gambit of class and fortune, fully at play in the early 1800s. The middle class then, like now, was struggling to its feet and to find its place in the sun.

So much of Austen’s work has found resonance for us, which may explain the continued popularity of Pride and Prejudice, and certainly Sense & Sensibility. Last year we did a reading of Jon’s adaptation of Emma and we felt that a young rich girl meddling in the lives of those who were not as privileged would not be suitable in these strained economic times.

Sense & Sensibility however felt very right, a family of women fallen on hard times straining to survive in a culture that neither supports them nor even acknowledges their needs. In the latest round of budget cuts, belt tightening, and the harsh alternatives all of us are facing, Jane Austen’s world seems not in the distant past, but up close and very personal.