Alert Janeite Lisa spotted an Austen reference in The Times’ TV column:

Jane Austen’s diabolical plans for world domination from beyond the grave continue unabated

Drat. Baldrick Dorothy, they’ve discovered our cunning plan…

The San Francisco Chronicle likes the musical production of Emma currently playing at TheatreWorks, though its praise is in terms that disturb us not a little.

All right, all you keepers of the Jane Austen flame, get over it. The new musical adaptation of “Emma” that’s onstage at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts almost certainly won’t conform to those burnished ideas of the 1816 English novel that Austen acolytes cherish.

Oh, hush. As long as it’s good, we’ll put up with a few inconsistencies…but only if it’s good.

You may well resist this take on a bright and ambitious young woman’s maturation that plays more like “Legally Blonde” - or “Legally Brunette” in this case - than it does some respectful PBS adaptation with period music.

Oh, heaven forfend an adaptation be respectful. Snotty yuppies the world over might have their moderne mellow harshed, and illiterate teenagers (and adults!) might actually learn something.

The show’s strongest suit may be its score. First, Gordon has the undervalued knack for writing memorable melodies. Some are ardently lyrical (Mr. Knightley’s impassioned “Emma”); others are sweetly comic (Harriet’s reverent love hymn “Mr. Robert Martin”). Second, in his Sondheimian mode, the composer can musicalize more complex emotional states, such as paradox (”The Conviction of My Indifference”) or emotional detachment and self-deception (”This Is How Love Feels”).

Now, that’s better.

The modernization that this reviewer so liked is disparaged, however, by the National Examiner.

Classics can be updated, sometimes with great success, but changing a comedy of manners into a musically bland piece of 21st century lack of manners is rather strange. The original Emma was already a too-modern figure in pre-Victorian England, matchmaking blithely and disastrously, shocking and charming the reader.

And yet, Austen’s Emma has almost nothing to do with the element-of-nature actress playing her in Mountain View — the sensational Lianne Marie Dobbs, who channels Barbra Streisand, Ethel Merman and Olga Korbut all in one. In directing her, Kelley must have remembered the words of his beloved Stephen Sondheim: “She twitters/She floats/Isn’t that alarming? What is she, a bird?”

Olga Korbut?

The rest of the large, hardworking cast is given over the Gordon’s excessive modernization, acting too large, in an un-British in-your-face amplification.

Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the links.

Two articles from two different countries present Jane Austen as a pop icon and representation of her time, and ours.

Alert Janeite Miss V. let us know that The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about how the England of Jane Austen is long gone, despite tourism fueled by film adaptations (which we blogged about a few days ago).

Is England about Austen and rose gardens, or is it really just a dreary island where the cost of living is too high and the clash of cultures too much?

It’s both, of course. If they were alive today, chances are Darcy and his creator would have thoroughly disapproved of a culture where ill-educated footballers (and their perma-tanned wives) are idolised, and where fluffy reality television shows such as Celebrity Big Brother direct the national debate on race relations.

But Austen probably would have loved the verve of the English press - for all its faults, it is probably the wildest, most passionate, and most free press in the world - and she would have adored watching the bungling royals. She was, after all, a serious gossip.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to a Newsday article about the recent emergence of Jane Austen as a pop culture icon.

So other than the sense and sensibility she brings to her novels, what is it about Austen that never seems to go out of favor? “I wrote my entire book trying to answer that question for myself,” Fowler said. “What I like about her is the romantic element, the happy endings and the chance to escape from our own wired world into a world with picnics, pastorals and swamps.”

And sandwiches aren’t the only things being attacked at those Austen picnics. “She’s just a brilliant social observer and a kind of gentle satirist,” said Scott Harshbarger, associate professor of English at Hofstra University. “She’s right in the middle of the romantic age, which was a very turbulent era with a great deal of social unrest. Yet her novels all take place in drawing rooms and balls and really explore the minutiae and ironies of society. People have read her novels as a way of escaping the scary world outside. It’s nice to escape to this wonderfully nuanced social reality that she’s created.”

We have confirmation from Sony Pictures Classics that The Jane Austen Book Club will open in “select cities” in the U.S. on September 21 and nationwide on October 5. We are attempting to ascertain if “select cities” includes any other than New York and Los Angeles (as the website currently says).

We are increasingly drawn to its elegiac tone.

P.S. Those who won the TJABC book drawing, keep an eye on your mailbox–we are told the books went out yesterday.

Lots of Janeite events this autumn! Alert Janeite Julie T. told us about a Gallery Talk at the Milwaukee Art Museum on September 23, 2007, in conjunction with JASNA’s Wisconsin Region. Amy Kirschke, who studied English Country Houses with the Attingham Trust, will be guiding visitors through the museum’s decorative arts collection, highlighting paintings, prints, and home furnishings from the Regency period and its American counterpart, emphasizing connections to Jane Austen’s life and novels. A reception with refreshments will follow the talk. The event is free with museum general admission and open to the public.

The Riversdale House Museum in Riverdale Park, Maryland, will have a talk on Jane Austen’s time in Bath on Saturday, September 29.

Jane Austen In Bath: An Afternoon in the Pump Room

Come to Riversdale on Michaelmas Day to hear Dr. Elizabeth Child speak about Jane Austen’s Bath. Survey food and fashion in the heyday of the watering place with our confectioner and milliner and partake of the waters.
Fee: $10/person - Advance registration required by September 23

Thanks to Austen-tatious for alerting us to this event.