Welcome to another Tuesday Open Thread. We use these posts to introduce links that weren’t quite right for a full blog post but we thought were still of interest to our readers, and also allow our readers to direct the conversation if they like.

Richard Wilson names the Top Ten Books Not to Read Before You Die. Guess what is Number 1. We think he’s just having a larf. Nobody could be that ignorant. Could they? Thanks to Alert Janeite Helen for the link.

Sharon Griffiths wonders why anyone would want to get Lost in Austen anyway, because things kind of sucked in the Good Old Days. (Hmm. They seem to have pulled the article. Huzzah for Google Cache. Read it while you can, for it will not always be there, either.)

Feel free to pimp your own projects and links in comments, or just tell us what’s going on in your patch of Janeiteville.

Laura Osnes, winner of Grease: You’re the One that I Want! and star of Grease on Broadway, will play Elizabeth Bennet in the Broadway-bound musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Laura will participate in the one-night-only October 21 performance event at the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, New York. The other roles have been cast as well; Alert Gentle Readers will recall that producer Lori Bajorek told us in an interview that cast for this event will be retained for the Broadway production, targeted for November 2009, if schedules permit.

From the press release:

Producers of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, The New Musical announce that Laura Osnes (Grease!, winner of Grease: You’re the One that I Want!) will play the role of Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet in the Broadway-bound musical’s one-night-only performance at Rochester’s historic Eastman Theatre on Tuesday, October 21. Osnes joins previously-cast Donna Lynne Champlin (Sweeney Todd, Hollywood Arms, By Jeeves) as Jane Austen and Colin Donnell (Jersey Boys, Follies) as Fitzwilliam Darcy.

“I am so honored to join this terrifically talented cast and play one of literature’s most feisty yet beloved young heroines,” says Osnes, who recently completed a year-long run as “Sandy” in Broadway’s Grease!, after winning the hearts of voting viewers of NBC’s reality competition, Grease: You’re the One that I Want! She will also star in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Broadway: Three Generations on October 2 -5, before starting rehearsals for Pride and Prejudice on October 6.

Osnes’ fellow alumna and finalist in Grease: You’re the One that I Want!, Juliana Ashley Hansen (Saved, The Musical; Thoroughly Modern Millie, Nat’l Tour) has been cast as her sister Jane Bennet, while Mark Blum (Twelve Angry Men, The Graduate, Desperately Seeking Susan) and Patty Goble (Curtains; The Woman in White; Kiss Me, Kate) will play the parents of the five Bennet daughters. Anne Letscher (Fiddler on the Roof), Molly Ranson (August Osage County) and Jacque Carnahan (The Baker’s Wife) will round out the Bennet family as Mary, Kitty and Lydia respectively. Jim Stanek (Lestat, Little Women, The Rivals), fresh from Signature Theatre’s ACE, will play Mr. Collins, John Behlmann (Journey’s End) has been cast as Mr. Wickham, while Rory O’Malley (Happy Days: A New Musical) has the role of Jane’s suitor, Charles Bingley. Patty Goble’s dual role includes that of Lady Catherine as well as Mrs. Bennet, and Jennifer Waiser (The Pirate Queen) will play Lizzy’s friend, Charlotte Lucas.

The rest of the ensemble, playing the numerous characters in Austen’s beloved novel, include: Sarah Dacey Charles (Les Miserables), Jonathan Michie, Kat Palardy, Jon Reinhold, Matthew Schneider, Michael Scott (Follies, 110 in the Shade, Showboat), Libby Servais, Eric Ulloa and Marguerite Willbanks (Beauty & the Beast).

Tickets for the October 21 event are $35-75 and available by calling 585-232-1900 or online at www.ticketmaster.com.

We have three new Austen audio links for your listening enjoyment.

The CBC’s Words at Large podcast has reprised an interview from 1996 on “the Jane Austen renaissance.” It could have been recorded today (except they are talking of the 1995 film adaptations of P&P, Persuasion, and S&S). The participants are Fay Weldon, Marilyn Butler, and Claire Tomalin. Thanks to Alert Janeites Lisa and Joan for the link.

Alert Janeite Sarah sent us a hilarious skit from the CBC’s Mostly Water Theatre, the Jane Austen Drinking Game (that last link is a direct mp3 download). (And yes, it did cheer us up–thanks.)

We blogged last week about a radio play on BBC Radio Four, “Unseen Austen.” It’s available for listening on the BBC website but only if you have Real Player. (Grr. Argh.) So we can’t say if it’s any good. Thanks to Alert Janeite Laurel Ann for the link.

La Verkin Community Theatre in La Verkin, Utah, is staging a dinner theatre production of Pride and Prejudice on November 6, 7, and 8. The organization does not seem to have a website, but the Hurricane Valley Journal has an article with all the information you need. Tickets are $25. There also is a free show-only family production on November 10. The dinner sounds yummy.

We’ve blogged about these before, so as reminder and follow-up, there are two productions of Pride and Prejudice being staged right now: one in Edmonton and the other in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Edmonton production at the Citadel Theatre is a new adaptation that gets a very good review from the Edmonton Journal.

It’s the spirit that dunks us, without dreary exposition, smack into the whirling marriage marketplace that’s the English countryside of the 1790s — and, particularly, into the volatile five-daughter household where matchmaking is not just Mrs. Bennet’s hobby but her vocation, her obsession, her maternal raison d’etre. Whirling? The show literally revolves before anyone says a word in Bob Baker’s production, designed and dressed in glorious and lavish period detail by Leslie Frankish and lit, like gorgeous varnished oil paintings, by Bretta Gerecke.

The Times Colonist has an article about the young actress playing Elizabeth. The play runs through October 12.

Jon Jory is directing his own (much-produced of late) adaptation of P&P at Actors Theatre of Louisville, which opens September 30 and runs through November 2. The Courier-Journal has a short article about the production.

Welcome to our weekly feature, Getting Local with Jane, in which we list local events of interest to Janeites. If these events aren’t near you, stay tuned–perhaps someday we’ll have an event in your hometown.

Third and fourth Tuesday of each month, Newmarket, Ontario: A Jane Austen Book Club meets twice each month at Newmarket Public Library.

September 27, 2008, Hamilton, New York: Colgate Bookstore is forming a Jane Austen Discussion Group. This will be the organizing meeting.

October 19, 2008, Concord, Massachusetts: The Concord Festival of Authors will have a piano concert featuring music from Jane Austen’s own collection. Thanks to Alert Janeite Dawn for the link.

Episode four winds up this…drama. We would like to point out, perhaps for the last time (but not likely so), that four episodes would be three more than ITV gave either Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, or Persuasion. 178 minutes vs. 93 each for more complex, more interesting, and infinitely more clever stories that actually, you know, make sense. We despair, we really do.

We heard from Kate, who reviewed Seducing Mr. Darcy on her blog and thought our readers might be interested to read it. We agree, and are happy to post a link. The plot sounds AWFULLY familiar…

Flip has to straighten out the book. Not only will she have ruined it for every reader in the world, but even worse the book will alter and alter until she, her fears, her actions, and every emotion she has will be public knowledge. Unfortunately the only person who might be able to help is a visiting Austen scholar, Magnus Knightley, a Brit who’s so much a dry interpretationalist of Austen that he can’t fathom why anyone reads it if not for the social satire. He reluctantly joins Flip for the mind-altering massage and astoundingly finds himself as Colonel Fitzwilliam, counselling a Mr Darcy who has been scorned and rejected by Lizzie the mere night before they should be marrying in the novel. And to make matters worse, Flip’s ex-husband and new teenaged girlfriend show up on the scene, co-starring as Wickham and Lydia. Will Magnus get the stick out of his ass and fall in love with Flip? Will ex-husband get his comeuppance? But most importantly: can the most beloved novel of English fiction be set to rights?

What is this recent passion to rip it apart in the first place, we have to ask? Is it some weird passive-aggressive reaction to P&P overload?

Review: There’s a lot of sex in this book.

Heh.

A special note for strict interpretationalist Janeites: If you can’t bear adaptations or retellings, if you’re dead against ITV’s “Lost in Austen,” if you have no desire to see a mostly-naked Darcy (unless he’s Colin Firth, I understand), stay away.

*steps up on soapbox*

One does not have to be a strict interpretationist to be critical of these ancillary sort of projects. Do any other author’s fans go through such angst when popular culture occasionally co-opts their favorite? We’re with Karen Joy Fowler on this one: “Surely no one else’s fans have been scolded so often for so long over the wrong-headed ways they love her.”

However, we are of the opinion that these extraneous items should not be accepted just as they are, like Bridget Jones running through London in her knickers. Each should be judged and criticized on its individual merits. Every Janeite is not going to agree on the quality of a particular book or film or action figure, and some may wish to have nothing to do with them at all, but there is no reason to condemn them on general principles; but at the same time, we are impatient with the idea that “it’s not really Jane Austen so if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Just because one doesn’t like a particular book, that does not mean one must dislike them all, and just because we are critical of certain projects doesn’t mean we are toffee-nosed snobs who can’t abide any of it. We just like quality. Perhaps our notions of quality are different from other Janeites’.

The Austen diaspora is in a weird place when it comes to these ancillary items, and it is reflected in the either-or attitude. The Brontëans don’t hold their noses when they read Wide Sargasso Sea and the Shakespeare folks don’t freak out over A Thousand Acres or The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (at least we don’t think they do; feel free to disabuse us of our mistaken notions). But the Austen fandom hasn’t really had a Wide Sargasso Sea or A Thousand Acres or The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. The closest thing we’ve had, believe it or not, is The Jane Austen Book Club, which is probably the most literary piece of Austen paraliterature out there. Other fandoms have fan fiction, but you don’t find it for sale in Barnes & Noble. Quite frankly, we are presented with a lot of crap, and there is a tendency in some quarters to fall into a rather easy place of “if some of it is crap, it must all be crap.” And there is a tendency in some quarters to fall into another easy place of “I liked this movie with pretty people in nice costumes so I am going to like this other movie with pretty people in nice costumes, even if the plot has been manipulated so much that it no longer makes sense and it’s so cheaply done that one can see the metaphorical zipper on the back of the monster’s costume.”

We do support the creative folks who make these things–that’s why we started this blog! But we don’t think we’re doing ourselves or our fellow Janeites a favor by supporting projects uncritically. If we keep watching and reading and buying, The Powers That Be know we’ll take anything, and they don’t have to try very hard or spend much money or offer us the very top quality items. If, perhaps, we are critical of the lesser-quality items, if we maybe vote with our feet and our voices, we’ll get something better. Perhaps. Would it hurt to try?

(And this is not to pick on Kate–we really enjoyed the review!)

The Royal Berkshire Academy will stage an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice at The Kenton Theatre in Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, from September 24 (that’s today!) - 27, 2008. Tickets are £5-10 and are available at the Kenton Theatre box office.

We heard from Ellen Schwaller Goebel, the regional coordinator of JASNA’s Metro Kansas City Region. She shared the news that Missouri will enjoy not one but two upcoming stage productions of Emma.

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis will stage a production of Paul Gordon’s musical adaptation of Emma from October 8 through November 2, 2008. Tickets start at $14.50 and are available by phone at 314-968-4925 or at the box office.

In a rather less ambitious but we are sure no less earnest effort, Blue Springs South High School in Blue Springs, Missouri, will present a stage adaptation of Emma on October 9-12. For more information, call the school at 816-224-1315.

Time for another Tuesday Open Thread, in which we post items that don’t quite make the cut for a full post, but we think still are of interest to Jane Austen fans. This week, we’re thrilled by the creativity of Jane Austen fans.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to audreyeclectic’s Flickr page, which features her recent portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Brandon and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy.

Alert Janeite Laurel Ann of Austenprose sent us a link to some adorable critters with, er, interesting names.

Alert Janeite Tracylea spotted something interesting at McSweeney’s…Jane Austen Writes Advertising.

Feel free to pimp your own Jane Austen-related projects, websites, or links of interest in the comments. If they’re of interest, we may promote them to a full post.

Several Alert Janeites sent us a link to an article in the Telegraph in which a rather gentlemanly duel of words is going on between two Austen tourism venues–Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton and the Jane Austen Festival in Bath.

Jane Austen Festival director David Lassman opens with a genteel bit of trash talk.

“I think of Bath as Jane Austen’s true home and people who come here year after year from all over the world certainly recognise it as such,” said David Lassman, festival director until 2007 and a leading authority on the novelist.

We suspect a true “leading authority on the novelist” would never make such a claim, but never mind. Tom Carpenter of Jane Austen’s House delivers a smart slap across the cheek with a white glove:

“The festival is huge fun and there is nothing wrong with having it there. Good luck to Bath. They are a commercial business and Jane Austen appears to be more marketable than the Romans.”

To which we can only say: OH SNAP.

We’ve been to both places and enjoyed each one thoroughly. Of course Jane Austen didn’t really like living in Bath (and the tourism workers are happy to remind one of it, whether smugly or apologetically) but it’s still an amazing place for Jane Austen fans to experience. You can’t help but walk up busy Milsom Street, look up and see “Edgar Buildings” carved overhead, without smiling and remembering Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe chasing to very good-looking young men; one can’t follow Anne Elliot’s footsteps in the “toilsome walk” up to Camden Place without imagining how Sir Walter and Miss Elliot would have felt at having all of Bath spread at their feet; one cannot enter the Octagon Room at the Assembly Rooms without thinking of Anne and Captain Wentworth’s encounter there, or walk the Gravel Walk (even with a snarky tour guide opining, “It should be more properly called the Tarmac Walk”) without realizing, hey, this really isn’t the way to Camden Place–and getting a whole new perspective on that scene in Persuasion. It’s a playground for Janeites. We love the city and would, quite frankly, happily live there.

But Chawton is something else. Every room of the house, the garden, the outer buildings, one remembers: You’re at Jane Austen’s House. Things mentioned in her letters are right there. The coverlet Jane pieced with her sister and mother; the china that Jane helped Edward Austen and his daughter Fanny choose at Wedgwood; the “topaze” crosses that Charles Austen purchased for his sisters; the table where she worked; the room in which she slept; the floors where she walked; they’re all there. This is the place that Jane Austen loved, and the place that she lived, and one feels her presence there more than anywhere in Bath–even at 4 Sydney Place.

As much as we love Bath, we would have to say: if you have to pick one Jane Austen place to see, pick Chawton. (And try to sneak in a trip to see the church in Steventon, too.) As the signs say, Hampshire is Jane Austen country.

Thanks to Alert Janeites Cheree, Lisa, and Baja Janeite for the link!

The BBC may find itself a bit above such fare as Lost in Austen, but it gets a bit of fanfic of its own on the radio side with “Unseen Austen,” which will be broadcast on Thursday, September 25, on Radio 4’s Afternoon Play from 2.15-3.00 p.m. GMT.

Impertinent young Lydia Bennet discovers that it is her sister Elizabeth who is the heroine of Pride and Prejudice and that her own love life is all offstage. She sets about putting matters right.

One hopes no doors in the shower or body hair topiary will be involved. Thanks to Alert Janeite Chris for the link!

Review by Baja Janeite

“Poor Mr. Hollis! It was impossible not to feel him hardly used: to be obliged to stand back in his own house and see the best place occupied by Sir Henry Denham!”

Here, after 26,000 promising words, the fragment stops. Jane Austen was no longer physically able to continue the draft that we know as Sanditon. However, Austen had set the scene, named over fifty characters, announced the heroine and scattered a score of clues which she planned to develop throughout the story.

Juliette Shapiro, the author of A Completion of Sanditon, has meticulously scrutinized this fragment for those clues. Her goal was to “resolve the mysteries of Sanditon” while remaining “faithful to Jane Austen”. (p.189, Shapiro) (more…)

Marion Johnson has written dramatic adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels Pride and Prejudice and Emma. “Darcy and Elizabeth” was performed at the 2006 London (Ontario) Fringe Festival and voted “Best of Fringe.” “Emma and Mr. Knightley” is a newer piece. These scripts are available for licensing and are suitable for performers as young as high school age, community theatre, or even professional theatre. Licensing information is available on the website. What could be more fun then your own Jane Austen Theatre? (Just watch out for the Henry Crawfords among the company…)

The Dorset Corset Theatre Company has kicked off their autumn tour, taking a production of Northanger Abbey on the road throughout the southwest UK, and the Express & Echo has an article about the production.

Ed is one of two directors of Northanger Abbey, and plays both General Tilney and John Thorpe. He said the show would appeal to the whole family.

“After our last Austen adaptation we had a letter from a family where the youngest was eight and the oldest was 75, and they all enjoyed it,” said Ed.

“We loved classic adaptations but felt they had been a bit too long-winded in the past. We like shows to be an exciting two hours so they don’t feel like a marathon.

“We try to stay close to the novel but it’s a piece of theatre so sometimes you have to be a bit irreverent. It’s in original dress and features Austen’s language.”

As always, if you get to go to any of the shows, send us a report!

The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton is currently staging a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The Edmonton Journal has an article about the production.

As Wood has said, and demonstrated in his wonderful adaptation of Dickens’ Yuletide novella, exposition and narration are Novocaine onstage. What, then, can a playwright make of a full three-book novel whose wry, skeptical narrative voice seems so identifiable? Wood found, to his delight, that “Austen actually has more dialogue than Dickens, that’s my impression: Whole scenes, whole chapters, are virtually all dialogue. And the plot takes place inside the dialogue, moving the action…. The language is incredible, constructed so brilliantly in one sentence. Very hard to paraphrase, and very specific to the characters, to the way a character shapes a thought.

“That makes great dialogue for the theatre,” he says. If times had been different, Austen “could easily have been a playwright.”

We were amused by this bit:

Baker considered, and rejected, two versions. One was Irish, “Jane Austen Lite, it felt like a plot outline,” says Wood. The other one was “everything I hate,” he says — shared narration, enthusiastic unison chanting, etc. “Lizzie’s getting married! Lizzie’s getting married! or “Mr. Bennet’s gone a-hunting!”

(Is anyone else having Slings & Arrows flashbacks? Imagine the theme song for that one…)

The play runs through October 12. Tickets are $35-100 and available online. As always, if you go, we’d love a report!

For all of our Gentle Readers who have perhaps gorged themselves of late on sweet Jane-esque trifles and are starting to crave more substantial fare, we have a couple of links for your reading pleasure this weekend.

The Times Literary Supplement reprints E.M. Forster’s 1932 review of R.W. Chapman’s edition of Jane Austen’s letters, and even when we don’t really agree with Forster, it’s still a real treat to read.

Miss Austen had no idea of what awaited Jane Austen. Within certain limits she could perhaps forecast her contemporary’s future; she must have known that the novels would remain before the public for some years, and she would not have been surprised by the tributes of the Austen Leighs and of Lord Brabourne, for they were relatives, and might be expected to do what they could for an aunt. But that the affair should go farther, that it should reach the twentieth century and reach it in such proportions — of that she could have had no premonition.

The same thing could be written now (and has been, though not nearly so elegantly).

The tact and good temper of the editing are as admirable as its learning. Naturally when one invests in a concern one comes to value it, and Mr. Chapman is not exempt from this sensible rule. He has contended with the subject manfully, like St. Paul at Ephesus; and would he have done so if it was not worth while? He puts his plea endearingly, he does not thrust his struggle down our throats, and he leads us with just the right combination of honesty and circumspection past a very dubious spot in the rectory garden. What’s wrong in the garden? The drainage? No. The novels are good—of that there is no doubt, and they are so good that everything connected with the novelist and everything she wrote ought certainly to be published and annotated. Of that, too, there is no doubt, and this elaborate edition is thoroughly justified. But—and here comes the dubious spot —are the letters themselves good? Very reluctantly, and in spite of Mr. Chapman’s quiet instigations to the contrary, one must answer ” No.”

We do not agree, of course, but cannot help but admire, as one admires something beautiful and dangerous. Just go read it before we copy and paste the whole bally thing. (This is the infamous “whinneying of harpies” review, incidentally.)

JASNA has posted the text of Persuasions No. 9, dated 1987 and long out of print. The issue contains papers on Lady Susan and the juvenilia from the New York AGM. Do be sure to check out Mary Hardenbrook’s piece, “Gunfight at the Combe Magna Corral“:

All manner of thoughts run through his mind, as he faces Cool-Hand Brandon, the fastest gun in West Sussex. He thinks of high-tailing it back to the Allenham Corral, but Mrs. Calamity Smith is waiting for him there too, and he would face anything rather than her wrath. He thinks of his treasured Sophia, and a song runs through his head, again and again and again: “Do not forsake me …”

Hee. We look forward to reading all the essays! That’s it for this week’s Friday Bookblogging, Gentle Readers, and always remember: Books Are Nice!

Middle-school students in Chicago will put on three Jane Austen plays–over three nights!

CAST Jane Austen Festival, 7:30 p.m. Dec. 12-14. Three Jane Austen pieces will be performed over three evenings: “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma” and “Northanger Abbey.”

We suspect these plays might be a trifle edited. Just a trifle. Cub Reporter Heather L.’s excellent site, Solitary Elegance, lists an adaptation of NA from a book of short plays designed to be put on in a classroom; perhaps these are something similar. We hope the kids have a lot of fun putting them on!

Thanks to Alert Janeites Laurel Ann and Lisa for the link!

Gentle Readers on the big damp foggy island nor-nor’east of Ushant, let us know what you think of Episode Three of Lost in Austen. Feel free to liveblog (post comments during the broadcast) if the spirit moves you.

ETA: Alert Janeite Valerie wrote to ITV asking why one cannot watch the episodes on ITV Rewind or whatever it is called. She received this response:

ITV are only licensed to broadcast in the UK.

Image Entertainment has the North American DVD rights but we have no information when they will release the DVD commercially.

So there you go.