Love and Friendship

Jane Austen is most commonly associated with pretty manners, tidy set pieces and Mr Darcy, but before she was writing for a public audience Austen wrote a number of highly satirical, highly ironic parodies of eighteenth century romantic novels. Love and Friendship, written when Austen was 14, ruthlessly mocks silly women, vain men and tropes that we now associate with early forms of melodrama. With carriage crashes, multiple deaths, and love scenes that only mock the lovers at their heart, this is a long way from the world of Pride and Prejudice.

Adapted by Laura Witz, Love and Friendship, the play, will be a fast paced comedy of manners that recreates the adventures of Laura Talbot as she navigates the world of the romantic novel, hindered only by her own stupidity and her new husband’s vanity. With a narrator and a cast of four playing numerous roles, we will use physical theatre and quick onstage character changes to not only recreate the world of Regency England but also question the authenticity of Laura Talbot’s ‘tale of woe’.