On the faces of it, Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” is a story of sisterly bonding and the difficulty for any smart young woman to find a suitable man whose reality bears at least some passing similarity to his florid verbiage.
Many women likely would argue that dilemma is as relevant in 2015 as it was in 1811, when Austen’s initially pseudonymous novel was first published, under the authorship of “A Lady.” Love in either era still requires the merging of sense and sensibility — or, if you like going to Las Vegas or a life of loveless affluence, the total abandonment of one or the other.
But underneath all of that is a story of financial fragility. The individuals in Austen’s story have more economic boom-and-bust cycles than Groupon. Austen’s notion of “sense” meant, really, money. At its core, “Sense and Sensibility” is about the perils of reckless women marrying for money, along with the perils of reckless women marrying not for money. It’s a proto-feminist work, in that it highlights the economic dilemmas of women looking for marriage, and in its portrait of the mutual loyalty and affection of its very charming heroines, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood.
There’s nothing reckless about composer Paul Gordon’s new musical version of this novel, which had its world premiere Wednesday night at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, directed by Barbara Gaines, essaying her first legit musical. The show is very carefully plotted, a tad muted and in need of more formative and thematic risk-taking, along with a couple of more songs (like the pleasing love ballad “Elinor”) that demand recollection. But thanks to the sparky Megan McGinnis, who plays Marianne and, especially, the poignant and generally excellent Sharon Rietkerk, who plays her more sensible but still-yearning sister, both Gordon’s new musical and Gaines’ production offer a moving musical portrait of two vulnerable Austen women, buffeted by men and fundamentally connected to each other.
Watching this show makes you long for a sister — well, I guess I should speak for myself there — which indicates, I think, that these two actresses (and the writer) have focused on the right thing: each other. The show also has a major asset in Sean Allan Krill, who plays Colonel Brandon and really comes off here as an ideal climatic Austen man: decent, honorable, kind, dignified and, ahem, mature. Krill, who sings the best song in the show (“Wrong Side of Five and Thirty”) beautifully, has all of that in play. The women seem safe in his embrace and, well, safety was important for a woman in 1811.
Plenty of new musicals of my recent Broadway acquaintance have cold heroines, disconnected lovers and other such chilly atrocities, so the level of emotion floating around on Navy Pier at this juncture in the development of a new musical actually is quite striking and surely indicative of simpatico direction.
It is enough to suggest the promise of this musical, although it is hard for me to imagine it on Broadway, given that it is not so scaled and relies so much on intimacy. Indeed, I did not much care for Kevin Depinet’s overly fractured physical production, which feels to me caught between a workshop and a full design and that does not blend well with Susan E. Mickey’s costumes. While I’m complaining about the design from these generally masterful professionals, let me add that Don Holder’s lighting was chaotically cued Wednesday night, often egregiously interrupting the reality of scenes. I suspect Depinet and Gaines were all about pulling abstract themes of the novel for their milieu.
It would have worked far better either to cut everything down, or, better yet, to offer at least some simple sense of disparate location, given the way the Dashwoods are forced to travel about England to pursue their dreams. You’ve no sense here of the crucial role place plays in love.
The other badly needed change is the nixing of the overplaying of the comic roles. Michael Aaron Lindner, as the Dashwood benefactor John Middleton, and Paula Scrofano, as his gossipy mother-in-law, fight against that, but their formulaic characters have precious little shading. More egregious yet are the perfidious relatives who could have taken care of the Dashwood ladies, John Dashwood (a misused David Schlumpf) and Fanny Dashwood (Tiffany Scott). Fanny, in particular, has all the subtlety of Madame Thenardier, the villainess of “Les Miserables.” Untruthful stereotypes have no place in an Austen musical.
Otherwise, though, it’s clear that Gordon, who also penned “Jane Eyre” for Broadway, has a real feeling for Austen and a gentle lyricism that is a deft match for her writing. The various men who flail around the Dashwood women — such as Peter Saide’s Willoughby and Wayne Wilcox’s Edward Ferrars — are as empathetic (and well-sung) as they are pathetic, thus adding to one of the show’s big takeaways: The economic stability of young women can never be assured when trusted to the vagaries and lies of love and courtship. Especially when conducted by boys, unworthy of real women whose emotional maturity is leap years ahead of theirs.
That, of course, is what Austen so richly observes in her novel, anticipating eventual change. And Gordon’s show — which will, I think, be greatly enjoyed in Chicago by die-hard Austen fans — already is true to what matters the most.
Now he and Gaines should fix the rest.
Jones is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib
REVIEW: “Sense and Sensibility” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater
3 STARS
When: Through June 7
Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Tickets: $48-$78 at 312-595-5600 or chicagoshakes.com
