ROMANCE MEETS REALITY
Written early but published posthumously (1817), Jane Austen’s most comical novel, Northanger Abbey, works equally well as a literary satire and a psychologically probing courtship chronicle. Inventively adapted by Tim Luscombe, who has as much fun as the author in contrasting thought and action, Remy Bumppo’s delightful U.S. premiere faithfully follows the rich premises of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Hall, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility and Emma: Our heroine neglects her own worth as she heeds bad counsel from supposed friends. By process of elimination, she must distinguish stupid suitors from sensible ones. But first she must purge her own harmful expectations.
Northanger Abbey more than anticipates Madame Bovary: Austen’s would-be heroine, Catherine Morland (depicted with both adolescent angst and captivating charm by the radiant Sarah Price) is a middle-class teenager and obsessive reader. Manipulated by her own make-believe, Catherine has become temporarily deluded by Gothic romances (most notably Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, with The Castle of Otranto thrown in for bad measure). She fully expects life to imitate art. Seeking sensation where common sense should suffice, this overly imaginative young lady must learn to separate wish from fact and hope from hype.
Her reality therapy begins when she’s taken for a holiday in Bath by her doting relation Mrs. Allen (Annabel Armour, excellent as ever). At the assembly-room balls, she meets the ingénue Isabella Thorpe (Darc Nalepa) and her silly and shallow future confidante and Isabella’s vain and duplicitous brother John (Robert Hope), who finds himself attached to the fortune he imagines Catherine conceals.
Most importantly, the impressionable Catherine encounters the sensible clergyman Henry Tilney (Greg Matthew Anderson, suavely confident but never smug). With consummate tact and a keen knowledge of how human weakness is so strong and with help from his good-hearted sister Eleanor (the wonderful Meg Warner), Henry will help Catherine, for whom every day is Halloween, to learn from her own thrilling and morbid mistakes—and in good time to spot the same in others.
The breakthrough Catherine deserves occurs when she visits the Tilney’s potentially menacing ancient demesne, Northanger Abbey. Henry’s teasing about the secret life of this sprawling castle triggers a paroxysm of Gothic paranoia in the easily influenced 17-year-old. She imagines that Henry’s father, the dour and materialistic General Tinley (gruff John Lister) has entombed his supposedly deceased wife in some haunted west wing. Daylight and good sense dispel these delicious phantoms: Catherine realizes that Henry’s truths are worth more than her darkest dreams, his parsonage a much more practical destination than an unhaunted castle.
Of course, with Austen it’s not the happy ending that enthralls us through these 150 minutes, but the tangled course of true love Shakespeare knew so well. Though the obstacles to the marriage that will bless the plot aren’t as formidable or ingenious as in Austen’s better known novels (especially the astute Emma), Joanie Schultz’ knowing staging makes them matter as it holds out interest with ease and enthusiasm.
photos by Michael Brosilow
Northanger Abbey
Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln
scheduled to end on November 10, 2013
for tickets, call 773-404-7336
or visit http://www.RemyBumppo.org/
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visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com