Review: Jane Austen shines onstage in the Saratoga woods

Jane Austen adaptations haven’t become quite as ubiquitous on Bay Area stages as the plays of William Shakespeare, but they’re often a delightful addition to the mix in summer outdoor theater. And there are many different adaptations by many different playwrights to choose from.

The “Sense and Sensibility” that Silicon Valley Shakespeare is performing right now in Saratoga’s Sanborn County Park isn’t the same version that played TheatreWorks Silicon Valley back in March, nor the completely different adaptation that TheatreWorks did in 2011, nor the one that Livermore Shakespeare Festival did in 2015.

This one’s a delightfully cheeky version by Kate Hamill that Lafayette’s Town Hall Theatre also did in 2018.

Playwright Hamill has a wonderful knack for inventive theatricality, gender-bending doubling and tripling of roles, and adding moments where characters get called out on their failings in ways that deepen the original story more than they subvert it.

American Conservatory Theater produced Hamill’s take on Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” in 2019. Her hilarious adaptation of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” is currently playing up at 6th Street Playhouse in Santa Rosa after a knockout production at Santa Cruz Shakespeare in 2019. Center Repertory Company’s planned 2020 production of “P&P” in Walnut Creek was sadly preempted by the pandemic.

All the shows in SVS’s 2022 season were originally planned for 2020 as well, including “Romeo and Juliet” in June at San Jose’s Willow Street Park and Shakespeare’s sexual harassment comedy “Measure for Measure,” which is now playing in repertory with “S&S” in Saratoga through the beginning of September.

Austen’s 1811 novel “Sense and Sensibility” is awash with the many story lines that make her work so enduringly popular: witty, high-born sisters down on their luck and navigating snobs, gossips, rakes, schemers and terrible misunderstandings to find true love and financial security at last.

Alika U. Spencer exudes fretful reserve and intelligence as Elinor, the eldest of the three Dashwood sisters left adrift after their father’s death and the estate went to their estranged elder half-brother. Elinor is terribly in love with Christian Pizzirani’s similarly restrained, painfully shy Edward Ferrars, and she bears up through heartbreaking disappointments in stoic silence.

Her sister Marianne couldn’t be more different, impulsive and outspoken to the point of what Elinor would consider imprudence. Jennifer C. Maggio is a less exuberant Marianne than is usually portrayed, but she brings an intense, passionate romanticism to the role.

Cynthia Lagodzinski plays their mother with savvy charm. Drew Benjamin Jones is amusingly clueless and insensitive as half-brother John, easily swayed by Melissa Jones as his snobbish and miserly wife, Fanny.

James Lucas is repressed to the point of unreadability as Colonel Brandon, the older man who dares not show his love for Marianne, and Myles Rowland displays easy earnestness as the rake Willoughby. SVS executive director Annalisa Tkacheff is the pushy and boorish embodiment of a romantic complication as Lucy Steele, who gets in Elinor’s way at every opportunity.

Hamill uses a legion of giggling gossips to comment on the action, taking on different characters in the play. Artistic director Angie Higgins’ staging leans nicely into the theatricality of the adaptation in wonderfully playful ways. Performers stretch a long lace-covered tablecloth between them to serve as the dinner table, twirling parasols become a carriage, and someone’s gloved fingers stand in for the keys of a pianoforte. The Dashwood sisters leave their family home slung over the shoulders of ensemble members.

There were a few glitches on opening night, especially with unreliable miking of performers who fortunately could be heard well enough without amplification in the cozy forest grove. Overall, though, it’s an entertaining production of a delightful adaption of one of Austen’s most beloved and enduring works.

Contact Sam Hurwitt at [email protected], and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.

‘SENSE & SENSIBILITY’

By Kate Hamill, based on the novel by Jane Austen, presented by Silicon Valley Shakespeare

Through: Sept. 4

Where: Sanborn County Park, 16055 Sanborn Road, Saratoga

Running time: 2 hours and 35 minutes, one intermission

Tickets: $20-$50, free for 17 and under with paid adult; 408-289-1901, www.svshakespeare.org