Handsome, clever and rich Emma Woodhouse finds new ways to exercise her charm in Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel from 1816. Claire O’Reilly’s pop-powered production ramps up the arch comedy and artifice in a fluorescent, Regency-lite setting, which exists somewhere in an Austenland informed by screen adaptations from Clueless to Netflix’s Persuasion, with a hint of classical Hollywood romcoms in set designer Molly O’Cathain’s sweeping stairs. What is retained from Austen’s social satire is the wealthy, leisured milieu of the characters.
Indulged by her widowed father, the hyperactive Emma (Toni O’Rourke) fills her days by manipulating the relationships of people around her. Fancying herself a matchmaker, she takes gawky teenager Harriet (Hannah Mamalis) under her wing, persuading her that the unctuous vicar Mr Elton (Domhnall Herdman) would be a brilliant catch. Mamalis brings puppyish energy to her absurdly gauche character, gulping down the biscuits that Emma throws at her in reward for her devotion.
As Emma spars and flirts with her childhood friend, the sharply tailored Mr Knightley (Patrick Martins), he keeps a watchful eye over her intrigues. With their feelings for each other being one of Emma’s many blind spots, the arrival of rivals for their affections, Jane Fairfax (Ciara Berkeley) and Frank Churchill (Herdman again), is required to open her eyes.
Performances in minor roles shine, especially Clare Barrett as the garrulous villager Miss Bates, and Liz FitzGibbon as Emma’s former governess Mrs Weston. These help distract from a cumbersome second half in which key plot revelations have no impact and Emma’s direct commentary to the audience, which at first seemed amusingly knowing, wears thin. When Emma’s famous humiliation of Miss Bates becomes an occasion for a pointed speech from Mrs Weston on the lack of opportunity for educated young woman like Emma, the production’s lack of a specific period or place makes this seem an awkwardly self-conscious insertion.
Keeping it all as light as a pillow fight is a much better idea. When Knightley warns Emma that she can’t control everything, she says: “but isn’t it fun to watch me try?” For once, this self-deluding character is right. It is.
