“It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best form of budget reply is a hilariously silly yet smart satirical wiggling.”
Said Jane Austen, or rather her omniscient narrator, at the opening of her second novel, Pride and Prejudice.
Well, not really. Something something, single man in possession of a good fortune, something something, want of a wife… etc.
While you don’t need to have read Austen’s recently proclaimed top-ten novel of all time – or even have watched one of the innumerable film, TV and stage adaptations – it will certainly help get the most out of cut-and-shut artists Bloomshed’s heretical rewriting. As will a cursory understanding of the much-noted, though rarely acted upon, Venn diagram of overlapping housing and cost-of-living crises.
Tldr: Everything is borked and only money can fix it, in this late-stage capitalist meltdown that values investment portfolios over happiness or shelter. Let them eat cake (more on that later).
Budget reply?! You mean Bloomshed whipped this production up after May 12?
Nope. The multi-award-winning chaos agents, with the ensemble writing and directing collectively, debuted their maniacal reimagining of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice at Darebin Arts Centre in the middle of last year. They’ve also rearranged the guts of Tennessee Williams and Oscar Wilde.
It’s just uncanny that their savagely en pointe show moves to the Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre right after Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ supposedly transformative, yet frankly piss-weak budget. You see, Pride and Prejudice has a lot to say on the subject.
Like what?
Well, Austen’s novel is essentially driven by Mrs Bennet’s panic over her family’s parlous state of financial affairs and impending homelessness. An issue increasingly prevalent for older Australian women.
Mrs Bennet, spectacularly played in a state of near-constant ‘hysteria’ by physical comedy pro, Emily Carr, is in a right fix. Their modest estate, Longbourn, passed down to her useless husband, portrayed by a non-verbal pot plant (as opposed to the talkative ones), has been entailed to a male.
The problem? Mr and Mrs Bennet have five daughters.
There’s Jane (a ditzy Anna Louey), the eldest and apparently prettiest, headstrong Elizabeth (Elizabeth Brennan), emo Mary (Lauren Swain), Kitty (a gender-flipping Syd Brisbane), overlooked/despised by her mum, and perma-horny, soldier-stalking Lydia (Laura Aldous, a hoot).
That icky entailing means they’ll all be turfed out when daddy dearest carks it and the keys to Longbourn handed over to their distant cousin, Mr Collins (Brisbane again, extra supercilious). A creepy clergyman, he’s also our narrator and fully obsessed with being a man of “high value” who has zero intention of looking after the Bennet women.
Hence Mrs Bennet’s escape plan: marry off her most promising girls to the highest bidder, pretty much the only way for most women to achieve security back in the day. Which is why most of the show is staged on top of set designer Savanna Wegman’s magnificently tiered wedding cake, replete with oversized silver fork (genius).
Isn’t it all about Mr Darcy?
Calm down, Mr Omniscient, I’m getting there. Yes, that’s the bit of the plot everyone obsesses over.
Played with the requisite buttoned-up gruffness by James Jackson, Mr Darcy is despicably (to Elizabeth) wealthy and an alleged slum landlord, if you believe George Wickham (Swain again), a swaggering militia man into any woman he can get his hands on (Lydia says hi).
Lizzie’s an independent (though not financially) woman who’s dead set against marrying. She’s seen as something of a proto-feminist by Austen stans. Except, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of the text knows, her and Darcy rubbing each other up the wrong way is actually hectic suppressed passion.
The smart money’s on a much more amenable Jane being married off to Bingley (a gloriously goofy John Marc Desengano), Darcy’s also rich, though not as much, BBB (best business bro). Bingley’s stuck-up sister (Aldous eating the cake scenery) is spewing.
So it’s all about climbing the property ladder for social security?
Pretty much. For all Elizabeth pushes back, with Brennan a dab hand at deploying exasperated eyerolls, Bloomshed cannily underlines that the system always wins.
Which is why this run, opening so soon after budget night, is even banger on. Nothing really changes. It’s all just ineffectual tinkering at the margins.
Stacked with savvy stabs at the underwhelming size of the Bennet dowries and the boys’ club of inheritance, it skewers the salty fact that money equals power and that anyone can stand on you to get ahead via negative gearing and the like.
Astonishingly funny, Pride and Prejudice’s pot shots come thick and fast. Bloomshed’s brilliant minds admirably maintain Austen’s structure but bend it just enough out of shape to amplify her points, exacerbating how relevant they remain.
When the show does go deliberately off the rails, it does so gloriously. An explicitly Australian plot twist, wildly off-book, is as deliciously wicked as all the cake’s a stage. As is subverting the testostero-normativity by portraying Mary as a sapphic raven-and-gun-loving disruptor, though more could have been made of this point.
For all its madcap energy, arguably Pride and Prejudice’s most hilarious moment is delivered in near silence, as an awkward tea party at the imperious Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s (not spoiling who plays her) is strung out excruciatingly.
Thankfully, at a bracing 90 minutes, set to sound designer Justin Gardam’s pumped-up Regency beats, the show is not. While it could be a touch tighter in spots and more focused in its spray, it’s a tartly tasty treat.
Who will love Bloomshed’s Pride and Prejudice?
Austen fans who aren’t too precious about the sacred text, the have-nots who dream of getting ahead and the very rich who can smugly laugh at themselves and/or those wedged waaaaay below them.
'Pride and Prejudice' is on now at Malthouse's Merlyn Theatre until May 23, 2026. For more information and to book tickets, head to the website.
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