Not just for Jane Austen fans: Buffalo Theatre Ensemble's 'Miss Bennet' a charming holiday diversion
“Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley”— ★ ★ ★
Mary, the middle Bennet sister in “Pride and Prejudice,” doesn't figure prominently in Jane Austen's novel. But the bookish young woman with a penchant for playing piano takes center stage in “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley,” an imagined sequel by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon currently in a revival at Buffalo Theatre Ensemble under associate artistic director Amelia Barrett.
The first of Gunderson and Melcon's three “Pride and Prejudice” sequels, “Miss Bennet” (which premiered at Northlight Theatre in 2016) takes place in 1815, two years after “Pride and Prejudice” concludes. Lizzie Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are happily married, so are Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley. Youngest sister Lydia and George Wickham? Not so much. Mary, however, remained at home content, or so the novel suggests.
Gunderson and Melcon posit otherwise in this gentle holiday confection, which replicates faithfully Austen's playful, clever writing and beloved characters while amplifying the overlooked Mary, who in the novel is destined for spinsterhood. Occupying herself with books and music, the titular Miss Bennet (Whitney Dottery, who most impresses when her character is most impassioned) pursues a life of the mind. But her letter to sister Lizzie (Paige Klopfenstein) — penned during the play's opening moments — suggests she is reconsidering solitary pursuits.
“Can one live a large life in the mind alone?” Mary ponders the question in advance of a holiday celebration with Lizzie, Darcy (a deliberate, dignified Robert Hunter Bry), Jane (Charlotte Foster) and her affable husband, Charles Bingley (Benedict L. Slabik II), at the Darcy's Pemberley estate. (Jessica Kuehnau Wardell's handsome library/drawing room is dominated by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a baby grand piano and a Christmas tree, a new tradition Lizzie introduced).
The guests include the meddlesome Lydia (the deliciously bratty Danielle Kerr) and Darcy's distant relative Arthur de Bourgh (an endearingly hapless Daniel Millhouse), a socially awkward bibliophile who recently inherited the estate of his late aunt, Catherine de Bourgh.
Of course romance blossoms between the bookworms. But miscommunication, misunderstandings and the arrival Lady Catherine's daughter Anne (a dynamic Katherine Abel), who announces she and Arthur are engaged, threaten to end Mary and Arthur's love affair before it begins.
But while it concludes as expected, “Miss Bennet” is not made entirely of spun-sugar. Women denied choices and opportunities readily available to men is a persistent theme, one that — unfortunately — remains as true today as it was 208 years ago.
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Location: Buffalo Theatre Ensemble at the McAninch Arts Center, College of DuPage, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn, btechicago.com
Showtimes: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through Dec. 17
Tickets: $44
Running time: About 2 hours 10 minutes, with intermission
Rating: For most audiences