“Pride and Prejudice” Comes to Door Shakespeare

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan’s stage adaptation of the novel is adding to the popularity of the classic story. The play was originally created for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre and has since been produced by a number of other companies. This summer Door Shakespeare will present the play in the garden theater of Bjorklunden.

A major challenge facing playwrights who adapt Jane Austen’s popular 19th century novel is the large cast of characters. Elizabeth Bennett, the central figure, has two parents, four sisters, and three suitors, in addition to others who play important roles in her classic story.

“We were committed to be faithful to the spirit of what Jane Austen wrote,” Hanreddy said of their undertaking, “while also creating a dramatic entertainment that would be funny, compelling and moving. We tried to preserve a considerable amount of Austen’s language” but with compression to preserve “energy and comic bite on the stage.”

Several stage and screen versions of the novel have been produced, but a particular goal of these collaborators was “to tell the entire story by creating scenes between actors” rather than resorting occasionally to narration.

Since 1999 Door Shakespeare has been presenting plays by Shakespeare and other classic works at Bjorklunden in Baileys Harbor. This summer Pride and Prejudice will be offered in repertory with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. For more information visit http://www.doorshakespeare.com or call 920.839.1500.