We received numerous e-mails from Alert Janeites today, including Sylvia M, Lisa, and Julie T, and Carol also posted in comments, about an article in Hello! magazine featuring photos of PERSUASION filming in Lyme Regis, particularly a lovely one of Rupert Penry-Jones, which we promptly stole downloaded. Click on the photos at Hello! to see larger versions; unfortunately the “group” photo is cut off at the right, but we are fairly certain that is Sally Hawkins as Anne Elliot looking back at Captain Wentworth… (anybody else having Richard Armitage flashbacks? But we’re not bitter, really.) The costumes look great.

Sylvia M also found a few more photos at Rex Features, which is why we are able to be so certain that it’s Anne looking back longingly.

ETA: a link would be helpful, wouldn’t it? *slaps self with Clue Trout*

Review by Liz M

Bravo to the Calvin College theater department for their production of Sense and Sensibility!

This play was an original adaptation by Stephanie Sandberg and Heather Leigh Brown, who were respectively the director and costume designer for the piece. As adaptations go, it was more or less successful. The storyline was mostly intact, and the only major casualties were the minor characters — there was no Margaret Dashwood, [not the first time poor Margaret's been sunk--Ed.] no Sir John and Lady Middleton, no Anne Steele, and no Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. The beginning of the play was significantly compressed — Mr. Dashwood died, John and Fanny Dashwood descended upon Norland, Edward Ferrars courted Elinor Dashwood, Fanny warned off Mrs. Dashwood, and the Dashwoods decamped to Barton in the space of about ten minutes — so audience members who had not previously read the novel were probably rather confused. And without the Palmers, poor Marianne had to be deathly ill in an inn between London and Barton.

The time period for the play was 1795, and the costume crew came up with some lovely costumes. A few of the men looked as though they had wandered in from a Dickens novel by mistake, but the women’s gowns were well done — mostly in the slightly lower-waisted style of P&P3 rather than the high-waisted style of P&P2.

The actress who played Marianne was my favorite of the group. She nailed the characterization of a melodramatic teenager, and she really threw herself into the emotional breakdown after being spurned by Willougby at the ball.

The actress who played Fanny Dashwood was an audience favorite — her scenery chewing got some of the best laughs. In her fit of anger after Lucy reveals that she is engaged to Edward, Fanny chases Lucy around the stage while wielding a feather duster, and wins by dragging Lucy around by her topknot — it was especially funny to watch because Fanny was about a foot shorter than Lucy.

Colonel Brandon had a smaller part, but he made the most of it, especially scenes where he was present but did not speak — you could see him constantly watching Marianne and being wounded every time she paid attention to Willoughby. One nice little bit: First Mrs. Jennings trying to push the Colonel and Marianne together by urging them to play a duet, only to have Marianne say she does not know any; then a couple of scenes later, Colonel Brandon in the Dashwoods’ parlor, watching as Marianne and Willoughby play a duet. Poor Colonel!

Willoughby was unfortunately a bit wooden. He wasn’t quite convincing as the almost too ideal romantic hero in the first act of the play, but he improved in the second act as the revelations of Willoughby’s flaws made him more of a real person and less of a caricature.

In addition to entertaining their audience, the folks at Calvin also try to educate them — for your reading pleasure during intermission, the lobby had several informational displays including biographical information about Jane Austen, rules of 19th Century courtship, matrimony and finance, and the art of letter writing. There were also posters about the set, costume, and lighting design.

So if any AustenBlog readers are in or near Michigan, I would recommend Calvin College for high quality theater productions. The remaining performances of Sense and Sensibility are sold out, but if we’re lucky perhaps they’ll adapt one of the other novels.

Alert Janeite MarcyG found an article in The Sun about Maggie O’Neill, which describes her role in MANSFIELD PARK thus:

“I’ve just done Mansfield Park with Billie Piper. That was a really different part again because my character had to be really nasty to Billie Piper’s, which was kind of bizarre because she’s just such a special girl. She’s such a laugh.”

As Marcy pointed out, “Only one character is truly nasty to Fanny Price in “Mansfield Park” and that is none other than Mrs. Norris. Therefore, it appears that this is as close a confirmation as we can get (for now) that Maggie is playing aunt Norris.” Sounds about right to us.

The Book of Ruth by Helen Baker is a Pride and Prejudice sequel set five years after the end of P&P. The author provided us with a description of the plot:

The Book of Ruth is set five years after Pride and Prejudice ends. Mary has spent those five years at home, getting more and more frustrated in her mother’s company. Kitty has spent most of it with her sisters in the North, looking for a husband, but without success. Despite her good looks, and her sisters’ help, her lack of dowry deters suitors.

Back home, the only significant changes have been the death of Uncle Phillips and the retirement of the local apothecary. The latter’s practice has been bought by an outsider, an educated man of advanced ideas which do not suit the neighbourhood. He boards for a while with Aunt Phillips whose curiosity runs away with her into realms of spiritism and mesmerism, into which she draws Mrs Bennet - much to her husband’s disgust.

The book starts with Kitty’s disheartened return to Longbourn where she finds Mary equally determined to escape the domestic circle. Mary has whiled away a long sermon by thumbing through the Bible. She has found a complete guide to husband-hunting - in the Book of Ruth. She is determined to put it into practice (suitably modified for refined modern society) to find husbands for both of them. Will she succeed? Can she possibly? With her father looking daily frailer, her mother obsessed with the occult, and Mr Collins waiting in the wings, time presses.

The author also said, “I have done my utmost to conform to the language of the period and to be historically accurate. That said, I wrote it for fun.” The best reason, in our opinion!

The book is available from Lulu.com either in hard copy or as a PDF download.

A while back we posted about SENSIBILIDAD, a film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility set in the Latino community of modern-day Los Angeles. It was only in the script-writing phase then, but it looks like the film will be made and will be called SENSE AND SENSIBILIDAD (an excellent choice, may we add).

Fina Torres is set to direct a contemporary, Latino version of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” to be called “Sense and Senibilidad” for Camelot Pictures and Odd Lot Entertainment. Torries will direct the project, set in Los Angeles, from a script she wrote with Luis Alfaro (”Electricidad”).

We look forward to more news from this production!

Alert Janeite Jessica found some more fun Austen-related YouTube videos.

We really enjoyed Paola Pictures’ two-part comparison of the 1995 and 2005 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE films, in pictures! We think fans of both productions can enjoy it–and even those of us who like the books best. The soundtrack is great! Part I covers the Bennet family, and Part II features Our Hero and other secondary characters.

Jessica also sent us this link to a nice music video featuring Lizzy and Darcy from the 1995 series.

Bill is! And we’ve heard from other Janeites that they are getting spam containing passages from Pride and Prejudice. Many find it a tad creepy, as though the spammers are tailoring their junk to the recipient. How can they KNOW?

Here at AustenBlog World Headquarters, Dorothy cleans up stray spam, so we generally do not read our spam e-mails; but we found this article at the BBC explaining why spammers are including passages from classic literature in their missives.

By including random text the spammers hope to fool the filters into thinking that a human, not a spammer, wrote the message.

[. . .]

But as Clive Thompson points out, automatically generating text that reads like it was written by a human hand is difficult. This is perhaps why some spammers are turning to out-of-copyright novels for their text. It is an ideal source of real writing.

The article is from 2003, but it looks like the spammers now like Jane Austen as much as we do!