The Proud and the Prejudiced
The show opens this Friday. (See the poster on the right.) It plays August 1-16, every night but Wednesday and Sunday. Then we pack everything up and take it to the De Jong Concert Hall at BYU for four performances during Education Week.
It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of an opening night crowd we’ll have. I know the “We ♥ Wickham Fan Club / Support Group” is caravanning in from Deluth, but other than that, we’re in totally uncharted territory. It’s an unfamiliar adaption of one of the most familiar books in the world. Do those two things cancel each other out?
Anyway, before things get too hectic this week, I wanted to introduce a few of the cast members to you.
Brittni Bills Smith
The girl can’t take a bad picture. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of the cast over the course of the past few weeks, and in every one of them she looks just as fresh-faced and adorable and charming and <insert your own synonym for “perky”> as she does here.
I never fully appreciated just how much of the story Lizzie carries on her shoulders. She’s in nearly every scene and has four times as many lines as anyone else in the show. I don’t know how she does it. I’m having a hard enough time keeping my three-and-ten lines straight.
She and David Smith (who is playing Mr. Darcy) starred opposite each other as Ado Annie and Will Parker in our 2004 production of Oklahoma. (They’re standing center stage in the photo.) The girls and I also had the pleasure of seeing them star opposite each other in BYU’s recent production of The Foreigner. (Which was HI-larious.)
Now they’re married. Apparently, if you fall in love with someone every night for weeks on end, it eventually takes.
David Smith
I hate him.
No, really. I hate him.
He’s tall. He’s handsome. He’s got a great voice. He’s got that tousled blond hair that women seem to favor. He’s got a jaw of granite. (I purposely chose a photo that over-accentuates his jaw, just to spite him.) He’s the nicest guy in the world. And every night he’s going to get up there on stage and portray every woman’s ideal and in the process make life infinitely more difficult for the non-Darcys of the world.
So, I take great pleasure in pointing out that he does possess at least one negative quality: he frightens small children.
My niece Abby mentioned the other day that she found it odd that he’s so friendly and funny offstage. “But when he’s playing Mr. Darcy,” she said, “he scares me a little.”
Jenni and Curtis Goodman
Jenni has a beautiful, classically-trained voice that is perfect for Jane, and I would have cast Curtis for his hair alone. (Is that not “Mr. Bingley hair?”) The fact that they’re charming actors is a total bonus.
And I hate to mention it because the last thing I want to do is make them self-conscious, but when Jane and Mr. Bingley are reunited at last, the music swells and they burst into a Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald-ish reprise…
Love’s spell has captured me,
it takes me by surprise.
Love’s spell enraptures me;
I’ve found it in your eyes.
It’s a touching, joyous, transcendent moment…which, for whatever reason, I find hysterically funny. It’s not supposed to be funny, but it’s so touching and so joyous and so transcendent and so absolutely perfect for those characters at that moment that I can’t help it. I’m usually laughing so hard, I have to excuse myself.
We suggested that the scene would only be enhanced by the addition of paper hearts falling from the heavens and small cherubs flying out on strings, but so far the director has failed to incorporate our suggestions into the number.
Matt Christensen
Yes, this is the man who stole my part. What makes it especially irritating is that he’s much better than I would have been. (My “Don Knotts with Tourettes” interpretation would have grown tiresome rather quickly.)
When I described David Bamber’s performance in the 1995 BBC version of the Pride and Prejudice, I said…
The word that always comes to mind when I see David Bamber’s Mr. Collins is “obsequious.” I’m not even sure if that’s the right word, but that’s the word.
Jenny and I tried to find the right word (or words) for our Mr. Collins and I think the closest we came was “excruciatingly earnest,” but that’s still not quite right. I’ll let you know when we figure it out.
Samantha Frisby
Samantha is our 16-year-old Lydia. She has a lovely voice, is a beautiful dancer (when I’m not treading on her feet), and I can tell she’s doing a great job as Lydia because every time I’m on stage with her, I want to slap her.
That’s pretty much the benchmark for any actress playing Lydia, isn’t it? If, by the end of the show, the audience wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you until you gain some sense, you nailed it.
Kiersten Honaker, Eric Harper, Jennifer Rasmussen
The Three Brusque-eteers. I spent last rehearsal just watching (and laughing heartily at) their facial expressions. You could cut the disdain with a knife.
Yes, that’s my sister, Jenny, on the right, playing Mrs. Hurst. And, yes, she’s much funnier than I am.
In addition to the pictures above, I’ve posted two new sets of rehearsal photos on Flickr.
Comments
elisabeth
CAN’T wait.. We’ve got tickets for Saturday night!
emily
It’s going to be the best ever. I look forward to every play you and Jenny are in. I love being able to tell people that I’m related to the man everyone has a crush on in the program (including girls that are Jordan’s age. That’s 19, by the way. 19!)
Kiersten
First, I love your blog. Your screenwriting career? Get on that, would you?
Second, wow, I’m on your blog! Thanks a million for taking so many pictures to document this experience.
Third, Jenny is indeed hilarious. She and Eric keep me in stitches 95% of the time. The other 5% is spent trying to keep a straight face while David is ad libbing horribly funny things to me during the dance scenes.
And you, by the way, are wonderfully cast as Wickham. Actually, when I saw your name on the cast list, I thought, “Perfect!” You undoubtedly don’t remember this, but way back when I was 12, my sister and I were townspeople in Mr. E’s production of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” We thought you were the most hilarious brother ever. (And, on a related note, I just discovered that Jenny played Dorcas, whom my sister and I adored.) So, yes, good Wickham.
Natalie
Grettir, you have officially made me sadder than ever at the fact that I have been MIA for a good part of this summer. I miss doing summer shows at the Shell…but I can’t wait to see you all on Friday! I’m so excited.
s'mee
You’re trying to kill me, right? Am I right? I’m seriously dying to be there and then you post this. Ugh. The wound is open and gaping and you, dear sir, are pouring in the salt.
I may never recover.
Grettir
Elisabeth and Emily (my nieces) and Natalie: Can’t wait to see you. Be sure to say “Hi.”
Kiersten: Jenny was telling me last night that Christy Westover is the real screenwriter in the cast. She’s even directed a number of short films.
And I do remember your family from Seven Brides, but you’re right, I’m a little fuzzy on the names of the townspeople. Heck, I don’t think I could name half of the brides or brothers either.
There’s a photo of that production backstage at the Shell in which you can clearly see the back of my head (which is my best feature).
s’mee: I’m sorry to cause you distress, but trust me, not seeing me on stage will probably extend your life.
jenny
Ah, poop. Why do bad reviews always feel like a punch in the stomach? You’d think I’d be old and jaded enough take it or leave it; but I still just want to shake the reviewer by the shoulders and holler “BUT WE WORKED SO HARD!”
The saddest part of this whole thing was the effect it had on the little kids in the show. One particular scene that sticks in my mind is 6-8 of them sitting silently around a table, leaning in to read the review from a small clipped-out piece of newspaper. Not a peep from any of them: they were crushed. One little girl later said sadly, “They even said bad things about my Grandma!” (who happened to be one of those involved in producing the show). Darn it, life just stinks sometimes.
It was funny to hear the cast members as it was being passed around, though: “Where’s the Scathing Review?” “Who has the Scathing Review?” “Has everyone had a chance to see the Scathing Review?”
Thanks to those who replied in the play’s & the cast’s defense, though some were overly generous perhaps. I think that one of the points in Mr. Collins’s (Matt Christensen’s) reply (minus the self-deprecating bits) probably best reflects the feelings of the cast: some things could certainly be improved upon, and we know it as well as anyone does.
(By the way, I think that I may have come up with a good word to add to the list describing Matt’s fabulous performance: exhausting. He says and does everything in such a beleaguered manner that it’s as though speaking and moving among people is, for Mr. Collins, grueling mental and social exercise. He even pats continually and at his moist brow with a hankie. But that may be due to the heavy quilted vest and jacket the poor man has to wear in the 85+ degree early-evening heat…)
jenny
I forgot to tell you our friend Jeff’s reaction to the review:
eden
Grettir and Jenny—I’m sorry about The Scathing Review. Especially for all those sweet kids and because of all the hard work you put into it. (I thought you two were MARVELOUS. I just wanted to see and hear more from both of you!)
I went and saw the show on Monday night and I must say that our group shared several laughs. Certainly, one of the loudest laughs came when Jane and Bingley broke into song after he proposed. What a swelling of song and emotion! Other highlights were Jenny’s song (shocking! shocking!) and seeing Grettir in uniform—definitely a dashing Wickham. And all the little girls looked beaauuuuuutiful. I loved seeing them come running out on stage giggling.
Mr. Collins was also a source of consistent chortles.
It was great fun to see all of you in it. I’m looking forward to seeing the next show you are in, and the next and the …
jenny
One of the things I love most about community theater, and unpaid community theater in particular, is the total grab-bag of fabulous, funny, interesting people you find yourself working with.
In this show alone, we have (in no particular order):
-Numerous beautiful, clever, energetic, plain-old kids (I initially typed “pain-old,” and suspect that it was some sort of Freudian slip. Two words: herding cats.)
-A “still waters run deep” aspiring screenwriter who’s had the gumption to make two of her screenplays into actual films.
-Several young women who are perfectly willing to act as surrogate mothers while parents are either on stage or changing costumes, snuggling the “pain-old” kids on their laps & listening to both their tears and their endless cheerful prattle.
-A stylish, beautiful mother who works as a buyer for a French-Canadian mining company and, thus, has to wake up every morning at 3:00 a.m.
-A video game programmer (male), and a computer programmer (female).
-At least five school teachers of everything from drama to 5th Grade to Spanish: four currently feeding the hungry minds of Utah County’s children, one blissfully retired.
-A busy mother who sews like a dream, watches over everyone and calls homemade French-dip sandwiches + blueberries + corn on the cob a “quick, easy dinner.”
-Crazy, energetic teenagers frenetically involved in everything from student government to ballroom dancing to lacrosse to international student-relations summits.
-A professor of German Pedagogy.
-Me.
-Handsome, conscientious, self-effacing Grettir, who everyone thinks is my younger brother, curse them!
-A male lead who has soldiered his way— while sometimes almost unconscious —through a most inconvenient pulmonary embolism & a badly-timed case of cellulitis, all within the last two months. And can still laugh about it.
…and that was just a sampling.
jenny
…and by the way: I AM staging a hostile takeover of tinypineapple.
My strategy: write long, rambling entries day after day until, through sheer total number of characters contributed, I can claim ownership of this site.
And I’m almost there! Just 3043 more characters and it’s mine, all mine!…[insert mad-scientist laugh here]
Michelle
Wait, Grettir’s not your younger brother? (hehehe)
But seriously, you guys are the best! Thanks for making the show fun to be a part of. And just so you know, I’m hoping that the end of the show doesn’t bring the end of our friendships (otherwise, I’ll be very sad).
apaperbackwriter
Hmmm…. The actor cast for Mr. Darcy looks about 17. Waaaay too young for Darcy. Perhaps he should be in High School Musical?
Now, this photo of the gal playing Lydia looks just perfect. How fun.
jenny
Naw: Dave (Mr. Darcy) doesn’t look 17 when you’re standing closer. He just looks a young mid-twenties. Now, he might act 17 sometimes–— but only in the very best of ways. 17 in a way that makes all of the kids absolutely adore him, and makes all of the “grown ups” remember that they have a goofy sense of humor hidden under any lingering nagging responsibilities and workday hangovers…
jenny
Now, Grettir: based on your last momentile (head in hands, exhaustion embodied), you’ve had it for now. But Indian Summer’s just kickin’ in. I hope I’m not the only one who’d like to see some more “comparison” segments involving other aspects of the 4 P&P film versions. Like maybe Lizzy? Or Mrs. Bennett (all of whom I love, but for different reasons)? Or even the Merryton Town Dance sequences.
I mean, whenever you have some spare time…
(Don’t hit me.)
Grettir
More in is on the way, I promise. It has just been a brutal month in the Beginning-of-the-New-School-Year-Time-Sucking-Vortex-of-Doom…and Juice Bar.
Perhaps, this weekend…