Utterly charming. This is the only possible response to Jane Austen’s Emma, which opened at the Fortune on Saturday night.

On an afternoon when Emma is still a relatively new novel, five young people (Sarah, Susan, Elizabeth, Robert and William) come together in an attic for impromptu theatricals.

Stepping in and out of characters, and making inventive use of whatever props come to hand, they bring us the story of Emma, the heroine who thinks she can manage others’ lives and comes only slowly to understand that she barely knows herself. As delusions and misunderstandings unfold and multiply the young actors reveal something of their own personalities, carry on their own flirtations, surprise and sabotage one another, and sometimes let their enthusiasm carry them to unintended levels of comedy.

Adaptor Michael Fry’s "play within a play" device works well, transferring the story from page to stage while preserving and respecting Austen’s incomparable characterisation, dialogue and wit. Every sub-plot in the novel is faithfully represented, and just about every significant incident recounted.

Anya Tate-Manning plays Emma throughout, and Mel Dodge, Julia Croft, Tim Foley and Patrick Davies manage to be everyone else, from dotty Miss Bates to poor misunderstood Jane Fairfax, from the excruciatingly awful Eltons to Emma’s doting but hyper-anxious father.

Lisa Warrington directs on a set where every attic-relic comes in handy at least once, and Maryanne Wright-Smythe’s costumes are, as always, a joy in themselves.

Fresh, lucid and funny, Saturday night’s performance delighted the capacity audience. Recommended, and not just for Austen fans.
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It is a given, that a rabid Jane Austen fan like myself, whose reading-life always has one of her novels on the go, will hate or love any interpretation of Emma. This is one to love. The consistently brilliant Lisa Warrington has united her cast in a controlled yet sparkling production that enhances Fry’s script.

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich… had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." That opening sentence of Emma may not be as immediately recognisable as the "single man of good fortune" of Pride and Prejudice, but it initiates the same sense of pleasurable anticipation. You just know you’re going to enjoy seeing so privileged a girl meet with a few setbacks, and learn a few lessons.

Michael Fry has ingeniously framed the book by having a group of young people, in 1820, decide to put on a performance of Emma in their attic, as a home theatrical – something very popular in the days before X-box. This provides rich opportunities for the actors, and could profitably underline the novel’s themes. Although Austen herself enjoyed family theatre, she uses the device in Mansfield Park so as to show the temptations and dangers such a pastime could invite.

But this aspect is not explored by the script. Fry’s determination to remain faithful to every possible detail of Austen’s plot leaves him little space to develop his own. The opening sets up an expectation that we will witness similar growth in the lives of the 1820s cast. Sarah, who will play Emma, like her is charmingly bossy ("My idea, my house, my Emma" she says as she claims the title role) and seems in need of some of the same lessons. Although this never eventuates, Warrington’s production compensates by the inventive physical activity of the cast, as they employ surprising props and use their bodies with exciting energy.

One decided advantage of the framing device is that Austen’s vitally important narrative voice – wise, funny and ironic – can be delivered directly to the audience, as the 1820 characters slip in and out of their assumed roles. Thus they can play a scene, then comment on it, retaining more of the flavour of Austen than a pedestrian regurgitating of plot alone could ever do.

The set is enchanting. The sort of attic, crowded with gorgeous cast-offs, that abounds in fiction, but is sadly rare in life (the ‘lumber room’ full of childhood treasures that Janet Frame had to invent for a school essay) has been lovingly recreated by Peter King. The tiny Alice-in-Wonderland door into the attic is framed by two large doll’s houses, which prove invaluable at certain key moments, as indeed do virtually all the props, especially the rocking horse. The Director’s Notes challenge us to find an object that is not usefully employed to tell the story, as even the old-fashioned spinet banished to the attic has its moment of glory.

The Notes also say the key word for this production is ‘playfulness’, which is going to make me sound imitative, but I swear I’d already jotted down ‘ PLAYFUL’ as no other word suits it better. The actors entice the audience into their world with an exuberant sense of improvised fun. This apparent spontaneity is the great strength of the production. Constant visual interest is created as the actors jostle for parts in their play within the play, seize unlikely props, build the famous Box Hill out of old boxes, employ a toy theatre to show the scene of the gypsy attack, and best of all transform themselves using only the odd shawl, into all Jane Austen’s gloriously eccentric characters. 

Pretty Anya Tate-Manning is superbly suited to the role of matchmaking Emma – far more so to my mind than Gwyneth Paltrow! She exemplifies Mr Knightley’s lovely description of Emma, ‘faultless in spite of all her faults’, her girlish vanity and well-meant bossiness too natural to offend. It’s impossible not to love such a delightfully flawed character.

Julia Croft makes a pleasantly low-key foil for Emma, in her chief assumed role as the ladylike and modest Jane Fairfax, although it is as irascible old hypochondriac Mr Woodhouse that she gets the laughs. As it is with all the women, Croft’s enunciation is clear and beautiful to hear.

Comic honours go to Mel Dodge, who as 1820 Susan gets the most amusing cluster of characters: twiddling her toes as a sweetly docile Harriet; bouncily breast-feeding as Isabella; trotting and prattling nervously as poor Miss Bates; and striking all about her viciously with her fan, as an utterly obnoxious Mrs Elton. And she seizes a fabulous chance as Mrs E. to literally rock the doll’s house, with the fermenting sexual passion that unites her to the grovelly Mr Elton, an inspired directing decision which provides one of the few moments when Austen’s text is surpassed.

Patrick Davies is wonderful, especially as despicably snobbish but erotically charged Mr Elton, leaping lecherously on an appalled Emma, before he finds his soulmate in dreadful Mrs E.  Davies’ versatile physicality (he even manages to replicate a fire) is matched by effortless vocal skills, and he seems made to inhabit this era.

Tim Foley, dashing in breeches and waistcoat, is quite handsome enough to justify the ladies’ flattering adulation, but finds it more of a struggle to convince as the ultimate gentleman, Mr Knightley. This direct descendant of the knights of chivalry, who is meant to be 37 or 38, should possess the gravitas to command every scene simply because he is the real thing. Resonant, cut-glass diction would not be amiss either. But the charm of Emma carries the day, and the inevitable happy union of the two melts all hearts.

Costumes by Maryanne Wright-Smyth, of becoming Empire gowns or tailored breeches, simply and elegantly evoke the Georgian age, and the additions for each different character are perfectly apt, Mrs Elton’s vivid coal-scuttle hat being my favourite. The production is enhanced by subtle special effects, but even more by imaginative direction and absorbing acting.

Altogether an evening of rare pleasure, indulging Austen fans with a worthy tribute, and giving all a charmingly playful experience.
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