The Watsons

by Laura Wade

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 10 November 2019

Samuel West directs this adaptation of Jane Austen's unfinished novel, with Grace Molony as Emma Watson and Loiuse Ford as Laura and a large supporting cast in a production designed by Ben Stones. The play was originally performed in Chichester, and is due for a transfer to the West End (as are so many of the Menier's successful productions).

Jane Austen began this novel in 1804, but chose not to complete it. There are some scrappy hints of her intentions, but no real explanation of why it was abandoned - a field day for an enthusiastic adapter.The play sets the scene, a predictable and enjoyable story of a young girl in reduced circumstances making her way in a social setting rich with possibilities for Austen's characteristically waspish observations about custom, propriety and marriage prospects. Emma has been brought up by a wealthy relative, and then discarded to be returned to her father's house just as the father is declining towards death; she has to cope with an older sister who has devoted herself to their father, a more flighty sister, and a married brother with a snobbish wife. She attracts the interest of the inarticulate Lord Osborne, and also has an easy familiarity with the clergyman attached to the Osborn estate.

All proceeds smoothly, in a style of presentation that is extremely soothing to those who love good Jane Austen adaptations, until the point when Lord Osborne proposes to Emma and she accepts. From then on, we are treated to a dazzling series of surprises as the issues of adaptation, taking on someone else's work, and authorial control, are subjected to intense, witty and thoroughly enjoyable scrutiny. The poised Austen style is bewitchingly used to pour forth quite meaty philosophical positions, and the self assurance of the heroine Emma, wonderfully played by Grace Molony is underpinned by an unexpectedly steely resolve as she faces a challenge far more difficult than merely escaping a banal family by marrying a suitable man.

In all this Laura Wade, the playwright, shows a real talent for moulding her material, while the onstage Laura wilts under pressure. Lines that might look smart or trite on the page are given moving resonance when articulated by characters appalled at their predicament and not particularly comforted by fulsome appeals to their immortality in literature; Laura seems confounded by the challenge to this easy enthusiasm when a ten year old boy laments the fact that he will thus be never more than ten (the complete rejection of the Peter Pan fantasy encapsulated in a heartstopping sense of deprivation). 

There are wonderful jokes about anachronism, sly importations of some famous Jane Austen lines from elsewhere, and a brilliant use of stage conventions to subvert themselves, in this brilliant play, given a fizzing performance by an excellent ensemble.