A reviewer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks the production of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE currently being staged at the Alliance Theatre (which had previous runs in Arizona and California) is too much of a good thing.

The production’s energy level is so frenetic that you sit through the first half thinking that the convoluted story has been abridged and that Elizabeth Bennet (Julia Dion) and Mr. Darcy (Anthony Marble) will get on with their business of lovemaking with economy and efficiency. I wish.

Instead, nearly every plot point, every epistle, every ballroom revelation is recounted with obsequious loyalty to the source material. We’d be better served by a leaner, funnier script.

Beware, for that way lies madness and many Janeite shouting matches.

Perhaps it is a truth universally acknowledged that a producer possessed of a good novel must be in want of a movie, play or musical.

Whatever. Where Austen is concerned, we may be better off getting back to the basics. If you don’t believe me, pick up a copy of “Persuasion” or “Emma.”

Well, of course.

We would love to hear from AustenBlog readers who have seen the play.

(Thanks to Alert Janeite Meghan for the link!)

ITV has listed a contest on its Web site to win a copy of the DVD of P&P3. They have five DVDs to give away, and the grand prize winner also will win an MP3 player.

And no, we are NOT going to tell you the answer to the contest question. Come on now.

Please note that the contest is open only to residents of the United Kingdom.

ETA: The contest is open! Enter away!

Alert Janeite Mandy sent us a link to an editorial from Michael Gove in the Times that has a little fun with the news about the newly-packaged editions of Jane Austen’s novels, about which we have blogged previously. (Scroll down to near the bottom.)

Thrilled as I am by the decision to reissue Jane Austen’s novels in “chick-lit” covers, complete with glossy titles, pictures of swallows and silhouettes of whip-wielding dandies, I can’t help thinking that the publishers are still missing a trick.

Why have they stuck with those dreary old titles, such as Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, which sound like the names of gated communities in the Home Counties? Why not attract even more new readers by properly rebranding the stories themselves? If Hollywood can turn Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse Now, surely a truly 21st-century publisher can do better than reissue a tale of late-flowering lust with the dreary single-word title Persuasion?

So, how about renaming Emma Confessions of a Toffaholic, reissuing Pride and Prejudice as Bad Heir Day, turning Mansfield Park into The Plain Girl’s Guide to Having it All, making Sense and Sensibility into Divine Secrets of the OK-Yah Sisterhood, selling Northanger Abbey as Catherine Morland and the Overactive Imagination and attracting a whole new audience to Persuasion by pitching it as The Private Pleasures of Navel Contemplation?

Most excellent snark, sir; but wouldn’t that be Naval Contemplation?