Often, the expectations others have for us become the ones we have for ourselves. That can be problematic when those presumptions dampen the soul by limiting a person’s horizons. The woman at the center of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley faces such a challenge. Watching how she confronts that test is a journey we’ll remember with joy and even a touch of awe for many Christmases to come.
A devotee of excellence, playwright Lauren Gunderson sets high standards for her work. Gunderson’s attention to craft explains why for the last few years she’s been, with the exception of Shakespeare, the most produced playwright in the country. In this sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice she co-wrote with Margot Melcon, they leave no detail wanting as they hone in on the greatest gifts of any season, love.
Their story picks up two years after Austen’s celebrated novel leaves off and focuses on one of its lesser characters, Mary Bennet. Mary’s older sister, Elizabeth, married the wealthy Mr. Darcy, owner of the Pemberley estate. Mary (Whitney Dottery) now lives with them and has settled into a life marked by comfort and solitude. Self-contained and precociously bright, her inquisitive mind and musical interests allow her to create her own joys. Books satisfy her scientific curiosity and offer her a way to travel the world through her imagination. When she plays Beethoven, it’s the sound of bliss. Still, she’s always lived in a home where romantic love was the engine that propelled the household. It existed in the home of her parents and she sees it in the home she shares with her sister, Elizabeth (Paige Klopfenstein) and her husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy (Robert Hunter Bry). The only one of four sisters who remains unmarried and, with no foreseeable prospects, she knows she wants and warrants more than the loneliness looming in her future. It’s that knowledge that gives her an air of willful determination. A confidence that Dottery in the role of Mary exudes with disarming ease.
The holidays at Pemberley looks more like a reunion of sisters. A very pregnant Jane (Charlotte Foster) and her husband, Charles Bingley (Benedict L. Slabik II) come in full of the glee you find in couples becoming parents for the first time. Their inveterate rule breaker youngest sister, Lydia (Danielle Kerr), follows; without her husband.
They’re all preceded by a stranger to most of them. A friend of Darcy, Arthur de Bourgh (Daniel Millhouse) is the spring that catapults Christmas at Pemberley into the wonderful world of comedy. Socially awkward, bookish and at only 25; the new lord of his own prestigious estate, de Bourgh’s an endearing mess. That he and Mary cross paths in Pemberley’s finely appointed library has the feel of kismet. So similar that they can, and sometimes do, finish one another’s sentences; they astonish one another. The fun comes in watching them try to run away from and then to the inevitable. It’s the novelty of what they’re experiencing that gives their interactions such fresh energy. Millhouse inhabits his character with a fullness that threatens to overshadow everyone and everything. Thanks to the sureness of Amelia Barrett’s directorial hand and the play’s beautifully calibrated writing, that never happens and we can simply enjoy the splendor of his performance.
Also written and played beautifully large, Kerr’s coquettish Lydia tends to zoom at Formula One speed. A “girl who’ll flirt with anything”, Lydia’s wedding ring doesn’t deter her shameless pursuit of the guy whose interest lies solely in her much more cerebral sister.
It’s the surprises that arise as the play’s entanglements get increasingly convoluted that generate so much delight. Seeing de Bourgh clearly in need of guidance as he grapples with the peculiarities of true love, Darcy and his brother-in-law turn to each other to help him. When the crisis deepens with the arrival of unexpected guest, they turn to the women to avert calamity.
Capable intelligent women often dominate Gunderson’s plays and they’re very much at the core of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley. Women, in this case sisters, who instinctively rally when the well-being of one of them is under threat. It’s not achieved at the expense of men. A happy home life has tempered Darcy’s haughty arrogance and in Bry’s charming portrayal of his character, he’s become a paragon of compassionate decency. He and Klopfenstein as Elizabeth play off one another with smooth synchrony. Something that can be said of the entire cast. Through splendid writing and wonderful acting, we’re reminded that honesty to self is a priceless virtue. And in Christmas at Pemberley, it’s served with laughter and plenty of joy.
Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley
Through December 17, 2023
Buffalo Theatre Ensemble
McAninch Arts Center at College of DuPage
425 Fawell Boulevard
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
Tickets: https://mpv.tickets.com/schedule/
