Pride and Prejudice Before Your Eyes at Toronto Fringe

I stepped aside to allow Lizzy Bennet to pass me in the hall, and then followed her into the dining room. Mr. Darcy was waiting, and I eavesdropped as they discussed the idea of humour and whether or not it had any place in civil society. I and thirty-five other eavesdroppers then followed Elizabeth into a bedroom upstairs, where she was cornered by the odious Mr. Collins–

Darcy sat right there

But wait! How could this be? How could we be walking through a house from the early 1800s, observing the events from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the sort of thing you get to see at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Not only did we see an adapted version of Pride and Prejudice enacted before our very eyes, but we followed the action, room to room, in a house from the very same time period as the novel. Talk about authentic!

This was my first time ever at the Fringe, and what an introduction! Actors Hallie Burt and Kate Werneberg performed their adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel at the Campbell House Museum, the oldest building that survives from the old Town of York, Ontario (now Toronto). And you read that correctly: two actors, performing the whole story and playing all the parts.

Lizzy refused Darcy in the kitchen

So all thirty-five members of the audience stood in the front hall, before the narrow spiralling staircase, to watch Mrs. Bennet (Werneberg) gush at the news of the arrival of Mr. Bingley in the neighbourhood. Then we followed the actors upstairs to the large room where the ball was held and Bingley (Burt) and Darcy (Werneberg) first appeared and Darcy first met Elizabeth (Burt).

We moved from room to room as the story unfolded, and although the entire production only took 75-90 minutes, we hardly noticed that anything was left out, so smoothly did the actors manage the segues from major scene to major scene. We crowded into an upstairs bedroom where Mr. Collins (played by Werneberg with delicious unctuousness) propositioned Lizzy while she firmly refused him. We sat in the kitchen area to hear her refuse Mr. Darcy’s first proposal even more firmly.

The actors managed their changes of character with aplomb and just a few minor props. For example, one moment, Werneberg might flutter as Mrs. Bennett with a frantic fan in her hand, and the next moment, she exuded a delightful smarminess as Mr. Collins, abandoning the fan and quickly adding a collar with pretentious ruffles. Burt leaned on a cane to make her remarks as Mr. Bennet, while raising her voice and squealing like a preteen as she chatted with Wickham, as Kitty.

As audience members, we needed to step out of the way if an actor had to get past us, and of course we needed to be prepared for some degree of stair climbing. But the production was so well done that these were minor considerations. The atmosphere of Campbell House provided a very realistic backdrop, while the ability of the actors to change characters on a dime brought the story to fascinating, three-dimensional life.

It was such fun, getting to be a fly on the wall for this one. I don’t know what I want more–to go to more Fringe productions next year or to see what Hallie Burt and Kate Werneberg will create next!

Up and down and up and down we went!