There are productions of Pride and Prejudice that merely tell the story, and then there are those that make you feel as though you have stepped directly into the pages of Jane Austen's beloved novel. By all accounts, Flat Rock Playhouse in North Carolina has achieved the latter, earning well-deserved admiration for its charming and accomplished staging of Austen's most celebrated romance.
Audiences fortunate enough to have attended the Flat Rock production have found themselves swept up in the familiar delights of Elizabeth Bennet's wit, Mr. Darcy's brooding pride, and the wonderfully ridiculous machinations of Mrs. Bennet — reminders of why this story has never once loosened its hold on the human heart since it first appeared in 1813.
Regional theatre at its finest has always possessed a special intimacy, and there is something particularly fitting about Austen's work finding a warm home on a smaller stage. Her novels, after all, were themselves studies in the drama hidden within drawing rooms and country lanes — grand feelings playing out in modest settings.
For those who have not yet made the journey to Flat Rock, this production serves as a timely encouragement to do so. And for devoted Austen readers everywhere, it is yet another happy confirmation that Elizabeth and Darcy's story remains as irresistible in performance as it does upon the page — proof, if any were still needed, that two centuries have done nothing whatsoever to diminish Jane Austen's extraordinary gift for the truth of human feeling.