Sense and Sensilbilty

The incredibly challenging task, but undertaken with gusto and no shortage of skill by Jessica Swale at The Watermill in Newbury this season, is adapting Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility for the stage.

We follow the three Dashwood sisters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, as they search for husbands, excitement, and ultimately a sense of fulfilment.

Austen's novels are full of scale and landscape, often involving different locations, many of them grand and expansive. Despite the best efforts of Philip Engleheart's design one can't help but feel the action in this production is ludicrously cramped and the locations too similar and not particularly believable.

A more bare and symbolic design might have worked better, as any sense of location feels lost here within the tight squeeze. The cramped space has a big impact on the piece's tone. For some moments during the play the acting feels stilted, awkward and wooden, with movements unnatural and sloppy as the cast try to avoid bumping into each other or the set.

This is particularly the case when two separate scenes are happening in different locations on the tiny stage at the same time, and also in the very clunky transitions (punctuated by Paul Herbert's pleasant score, albeit played by a synthetic-sounding electric piano).

However what this production does, which is a huge achievement, is cut to the heart of the real human intimacies within Austen's work. By stripping away the grandeur often displayed in filmed adaptations, Swale allows us to fully focus on these characters, their thoughts and feelings. And the audience truly react as if it's meeting the Dashwoods for the first time.

Cramming a cast of nine onto this configuration of the Watermill stage is a little misguided, particularly when between them they're playing nineteen characters, although to be fair to Swale it would have been nigh-on impossible to cut the number down further and maintain the plot.

Stand-out performances come from William Owen (a commanding and charming Willoughby), Graham O'Mara (a wonderfully kind and sensitive Ferrars), Cassie Layton (an utterly believable Marianne) and the beautifully understated Sally Scott as Elinor. In fact the ensemble as a whole is fairly strong, even with the amount of challenging multi-rolling and the occasional mumble or line slip.

The piece is certainly engaging and hugely entertaining. It could do with being a bit shorter, and it's crying out for simplification in design, but there's something magical about seeing this story play out so close-up. I found myself smiling almost constantly, laughing on occasion, and perhaps wiping a small tear during moments.

In terms of the intimacy and of the detail of these characters personalities, it's an adaptation which I expect Austen would have been proud of. It's really rather lovely.

Sense and Sensibility runs at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury until 10 May.