Sense and Sensibility At The Stratford Festival
Kate Hamill brings an antic disposition to her adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novels. Her Sense and Sensibility, now getting an energetic, if occasionally over-emphatic production at the Stratford Festival stays more or less true to the original while mining its comic possibilities.
For the non-Austen fans, Sense and Sensibility follows the travails of the older Dashwood daughters, Elinor (Jessica B. Hill) and Marianne (Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane). Their kid sister Margaret (Jade V. Robinson) is around for comic relief. They are offspring of the late Mr. Dashwood’s second marriage; but he had a son by his first.
According to the rigid laws of primogeniture, the entire Dashwood estate has devolved to John Dashwood (Andrew Chown). Dashwood père enjoined his son to see the girls well bestowed, but John’s shrewish wife, Fanny (Sara Farb) pressures him to all but impoverish the girls and their mother (Glynis Ranney).
And so Elinor and Marianne are thrown into the cruel meat market … excuse me, I meant to say marriage market to which the patriarchy of Regency England condemned all women. Will they find suitable mates? Will they marry for love? Or money? Or both? Will they live in luxury? Or in genteel poverty? Thereby hangs the tale of Sense and Sensibility.
For those who are new to Sense and Sensibility, I am loath to blurt out spoilers. Suffice it to say there are three contenders for the affections of the Dashwood girls – Edward Ferrars (Thomas Duplessie), brother to John’s nasty wife; John Willoughby (Andrew Chown again) a dashing man about town; and Colonel Brandon (Shane Carty), a well-to-do landowner over 30. One is a cad, one shy and tongue-tied, one a quiet man with a tragic past.
As with her Pride and Prejudice, Hamill’s Sense and Sensibility takes some liberties. The most notable of them is the introduction of five “Gossips”, figures that exist in the novel only by implication.
In director Daryl Cloran’s kinetic production they not only provide commentary and interstitial narration, but they also play horses and dogs, and whisk set pieces on and off stage.
They are a tad overdone – their performances often as cartoonish as their costumes (done very nicely by Dana Osborne) – but on balance the conceit works nicely. They got a well-deserved round of applause when they created a carriage for the Dashwood clan.
Hamill’s script for Sense and Sensibility specifies that several roles be double cast. I suspect she made this decision because the original production did not have the luxury of the Stratford Festival’s large company of actors. Cloran honours her wishes (perhaps he had to!), which gives some of the performers a chance to show off their versatility.
Osborne has also provided an elegantly simple set design. Most of the walls of the Festival stage are covered with large, muted, empty picture frames, which seem to symbolize the importance of ancestry and family relationships in the world of Sense and Sensibility.
A few large, moveable gold frames function as set pieces to create doors and windows through which the Gossips can keep close tabs on the proceedings. All the furniture is on wheels which Cloran has put to ingenious, often comic use to keep the action moving briskly on the Festival’s thrust stage and allow everyone in the audience to see what’s going on.
Cloran seems to have amped up some of the minor roles for comic effect, but the central characters, where it really counts, are very well done indeed.
Hill and Sinclair-Brisbane are both exemplary, with Hill perhaps first among equals. Both manage to show us, at least at moments, the very young girls that Austen wrote. (Elinor is nineteen, Marianne seventeen. You’ll have to turn to the novel for the full effect.)
As the thirteen-year-old Margaret Dashwood, Robinson makes a smashing Festival debut. She has worked with Cloran before and we have him to thank for introducing her to the company. I hope she sticks around.
As the various contenders for the affections of the Dashwood girls, Duplessie, Chown, and Carty acquit themselves admirably. Festival veterans Seanna McKenna and Steve Ross shine in the minor roles of Mrs. Jennings and Sir John Middleton.
At the risk of outing myself as a doctrinaire “Jane-ite,” let me stress that this is Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. I hope this admirable production will encourage at least some to read the original. It’s a ripping yarn.
Sense and Sensibility continues at the Festival Theatre through October 25, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Stratford Festival website.
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