Fast and Funny, But Still Packing a Punch

It’s hard to believe, but it was just eight seasons ago when Elizabeth Bennet and Mister Darcy found true love in the Angus Bowmer Theatre as Pride and Prejudice played to full houses all season long. Festival audiences impatient for more of Jane Austen’s wit and wisdom will be amply rewarded this season as they embark on perilous adventures with the Dashwood family in Sense and Sensibility, directed by OSF newcomer Hana S. Sharif.

Sharif is a director, producer and playwright, and is the associate artistic director of Baltimore’s Center Stage, working alongside artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah (director of The Liquid Plain at OSF in 2013 and a Play on!–commissioned playwright). Sharif has directed critically acclaimed productions of Pride and Prejudice and Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Center Stage, so 18th- and 19th-century costume dramas are quickly becoming a specialty.

When Sharif got the call from Bill Rauch to discuss directing Sense and Sensibility at OSF, she said she was “over the moon,” not only because she was being invited to direct at one of America’s largest theatre companies but specifically because of the material being offered. “My heart was pounding because it was to do Jane Austen’s work,” she recalled at the show introduction for the OSF company in early January. “I first discovered Sense and Sensibility as a young girl looking at books in my grandmother’s library. I fell in love with the world. I adored the ballrooms and the delicious gossip and the romance. This was not a world I had experienced as a 12-year-old girl in Texas.”

Once smitten, it was all Austen, all the time for the young Sharif. “I dove head first into Austen’s canon—I wanted to read everything!” she recalled. “I found myself in those women. They were often the smartest people in the room, but always felt a little outside of the society in which they lived. There was a sense that they were being judged and at times walled in by society, but they had the desire to break down those walls and live life on their own terms. That really appealed to the 12-year-old Hana in a big way.”

One hallmark of great and lasting works of literature and drama (Shakespeare, anyone?) is that their power shines through any number of adaptations and interpretations. We’ll leave it to another article to discuss the merits of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but even before the appearance of flesh-eating creatures, the works of Austen had been subjected to dozens if not hundreds of adaptations, from somber BBC adaptations to Bollywood to angst-filled teen Hollywood dramas.

Sharif has seen and read her fair share of Austen adaptations and is ecstatic about what adapter Kate Hamill has brought to her sparkling version of the Dashwoods’ journey, calling it “unique and extraordinary” and “a raucous good time.” The New York Times agreed, praising the original 2016 Bedlam Theatre production as “pumped full of helium” and “audaciously high-energy.”

“Kate has this magnificent concept of the gossips giving us our entry into the story,” Sharif enthused. “Almost everyone in the cast plays a gossip because they are the society. They activate and manipulate the world that we see.”

Austen’s novel follows the three Dashwood sisters (Elinor, Marianne and Margaret) as they move with their widowed mother from the estate on which they grew up to their new home—a meager cottage on the property of a distant relative. In typical Austen style, the women experience love, longing and romance, and face the challenges of wily, unpredictable men while also balancing the strong pull of familial duty.

While Hamill’s adaptation has been lauded as ferociously funny and fast-paced, it would be a mistake to assume that the power of Austen’s original story is in any way diluted. “I love working with comedy, especially when we are talking about big humanistic questions,” observed Sharif. “Being able to do that through laughter makes those moments of heartbreak really profound for us. I also think Kate’s 21st-century ‘sensibility’ really comes through—it feels so relevant. At our first read-through, we all spoke about parts of the script that resonate for us in our own lives.

“There is real pain and danger in the play, and the power of Kate’s adaptation is that we get all of that, but we get it in a context that allows us to laugh and lean into the journey and go wherever it takes us.”

As an artist of color and an admirer of OSF’s leadership in the field through its diversity and inclusion efforts, Sharif never doubted that her cast and creative team would resemble the diversity of our world in 2018.

“Any character in this play can be any ethnicity,” she said. “No matter who you are, you should be able to locate yourself in this world.”

Voice and text director Robert Ramirez, a Latinx artist, echoed Sharif’s enthusiasm for voices of color working on Austen, saying “Like Hana, I have been obsessed with Austen for years, so when I got the call to do the show, I hung up the phone and cried, ‘Finally! Someone has asked me to do an Austen play!’ ”

To experience Austen’s work in 2018 as the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are filling our collective consciousness is to be reminded once again of Austen’s enduring power and universality. “I’ve certainly been meditating on the ‘love is a battlefield’ aspect of the story,” observes dramaturg Lydia G. Garcia, “and thinking how relevant the story of young women fighting for their agency and dignity feels at this particular time. I challenge the Battle of Agincourt to outdo the terror of courtship in the harsh glare of upper-class London society.”

“We’ve been spending a lot of time in rehearsal talking about the dire stakes for the women in this society,” added Sharif. “They have very little agency to acquire property or accumulate wealth. Having to create some level of security for themselves winds up making the love between the two sisters, Elinor and Marianne, the greatest love story in the play. We ride along on their journey of love and heartbreak as they navigate the world and find a way to realize the women they are going to become within the context of this society.”

Sense and Sensibility plays in the Angus Bowmer Theatre through October 28. Tickets and information available at www.osfashland.org