Now in their 44th season, Montford Park Players have staged North Carolina’s longest-running Shakespeare festival. Yet for its summer finale, the company decided to go with an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. “Our membership has the privilege of selecting three of the shows that we do each year,” says Scott Keel, Montford Park Players’ artistic director. “Pride and Prejudice was one of those three.”
Playwright and MPP member Gregory Roberts-Gassler wrote the stage version of the classic novel. “There has been a call for some time to do a Jane Austen adaptation,” says Keel. “Gregory has been hard at work on this version for many years.” The production opens Friday, Sept. 2, at the Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre.
A story of manners, marriage, morality and upbringing, Pride and Prejudice follows the five unmarried daughters of the Bennet household. When Charles Bingley (a young gentleman played by Jason Williams) rents the manor at nearby Netherfield Park, a great stir ensues.
Director Dusty McKeelan hopes to add to the commotion through cross-gender casting. “[It’s] meant to be a symbolic statement against HB2,” he says. “It also reinforces the absurdity of a society that forces people into binary gender roles that fit very few of us.”
McKeelan adds, “Our primary intention in the direction and performance of the play is to give the audience a lighthearted romantic comedy that will leave them smiling, but I also hope that — even if on a very small level — we contribute to the movement against this embarrassing legislation.”
WHAT: Pride and Prejudice
WHERE: Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre, 92 Gay St., montfordparkplayers.org
WHEN: Fridays to Sundays, Sept. 2-24, 7:30 p.m. Free
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