Bedlam's Sense & Sensibility

A beautifully staged and choreographed takeoff, by New York’s innovative Bedlam theatre company, on the early Jane Austen novel about two sisters navigating the seas of love.

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Reading the novels of Jane Austen and seeing the characters in the Hamill-Tucker adaptation come to life onstage confirm how little human nature has changed over the course of 150 years or so, even if the methods of communication have allowed rumor, innuendo, and false news to spread further and faster.

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Bedlam is deadly serious about performing quality theater, and equally serious about having fun at the same time. Those two qualities – and the talents of the cast, director Tucker and playwright Hamill – have breathed new theatrical life into classic pieces of literature, made them more accessible, and brought in new audiences to be delighted by them.

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Although uproariously funny at times, the material is never played strictly for laughs, and the scenes where Elinor and Marianne have their hopes dashed are still painfully touching.

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More than a gimmick, Bedlam’s free-wheeling production adds a joyous energy to Austen’s tale of love and marriage, while avoiding the fussy Masterpiece Theatre trappings that usually accompany Austen.

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For those who have no prior history with either the Austen novel or a film version, Director Eric Tucker and Bedlam’s production is accessible to any and all, rolling out the story in their inimitable style.

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Whereas a movie brings the camera closer to or further from the action, in this cast the action surges toward the viewer and then recedes. The result is restless and absorbing.

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Marriage deals on wheels might be an apt description of Bedlam’s Sense & Sensibility. The former, of course, come courtesy of Jane Austen, who famously wrote elsewhere: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The latter are appended by the New York-based theater troupe Bedlam, whose delightfully exuberant 2014 staging of Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility — in a frisky adaptation by Kate Hamill, skitters and spins about the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center playing space (through Jan. 14) like the pieces and parts of some love-racked pinball machine.

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Jane Austen fans will likely adore Sense & Sensibility. It retains the heart and wit of the beloved novel. But traditionalists must keep an open mind. Yes, the show is a tribute to Austen’s analysis on proper conduct and the merits of good sense. But it also celebrates the elasticity of theater.

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The Bedlam theater company’s frolic with Miss Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is absolutely delightful, at a moment’s notice changing from light and frivolous to polite and sensible – with just the right touch of nonsense.

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While it is scrupulously true to the plot of the novel, Hamill’s adaptation and Eric Tucker’s direction make this very much a story for our time. It brings the gossips of the tale front and center, unveiling how they revel in other people’s misery, could care less if they ruin lives, and run amok with juicy details.

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The basic story (or, rather, stories) are well enough known from the novel as well as the numerous television and film adaptations, but this version by Bedlam (as is their wont) is a real trip like no other. And every single member of this tenfold ensemble is brilliant. As just one example, in the blink of an eye Birnbaum flashes from motherly concern as Mrs. Dashwood to airhead Anne Steele to ancient Mrs. Ferrars with lightning speed in a bravura display.

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If we all need a little guidance on the issue of equality, Jane Austen is a good person to consult. A British author who was born in 1775, Austen created strong women who are independent thinkers. As literary creations, they are uncommonly complex for the time in which they were written. Women were the drivers of her plots, and the heroes of her stories. Austen’s legacy is her ability to tell tales of empowerment during a time of social repression.

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Bedlam, founded by Nichols and director-actor Eric Tucker around the time Hamill started working on her piece, found it an ideal vehicle for the company’s highly theatrical aesthetic, which features fast-paced adaptations, often performed in repertory with overlapping casts, that seem to cut to the essence of dense texts and make them feel light on their feet.

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This nonstop, high-energy romp gets as many laughs from its blocking – no, let’s call it choreography, of both people and objects – as from Kate Hamill’s artful adaptation of Austen’s witty 1811 novel.

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The actor/writer’s works, many adapted from Jane Austen, are full of empowered ladies, sometimes played by her.

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Janeites, rejoice! Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility… has been delightfully redeemed by a most surprising source: the Bedlam Theatre Company’s radical, experimental, hilarious, lovable and altogether excellent adaptation for the stage.

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Bedlam’s production of Sense & Sensibility is unlike any rendition of a Jane Austen novel you’ve ever seen. The cast members twirl about on rolling chaise lounges, dole out an endless array of outrageous facial expressions, and foster a rare level of intimacy between actors and audience… all under the vision of actress and playwright Kate Hamill.

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Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility provides the source for the hilarious, entertainment, Sense and Sensibility, in a sassy theatrical production at the Gym at Judson.

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“Sense & Sensibility” hits all the right notes.

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First presented for a short run in repertory in 2014, this enchanting romp of a play has returned on its own, with a few adjustments, but with its buoyant spirits, cunning stagecraft and enlivening insights intact.

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Young playwright Kate Hamill is the best thing to happen to Jane Austen since Colin Firth. Her wonderfully witty and whimsical adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are the best stage adaptations of Austen’s work to date.

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