Mrs Bennet and the Body in the Library

By Susannah Donim

Chapter Two – Adaptation, Literary and Otherwise

Mike prepares for the role of a lifetime, but his classmates are all laughing at him, especially his girlfriend.

“Think of it as a challenge, Mike,” MacNair said blithely in response to my objections. “You showed you understood your character’s nature and motivation better than anyone else, so I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”

“But I’m a man!”

“Of course you are. So what? You want to be an actor, don’t you? That’s all about pretending to be someone else.”

But I didn’t really. I was there to study English. It was Holly who wanted to act; I was just along for the ride.

“But Mrs Bennet isn’t supposed to be a… a… a Pantomime Dame!” I spluttered.

“No, but there are plenty of examples of male actors playing middle-aged women in serious shows: Mrs Doubtfire; Miss Hannigan in Annie; Edna Turnblad in Hairspray; Miss Fritton in St Trinians. Lots of men have played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest; and what about Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot?”

“Those are all comic parts.”

“So is Mrs Bennet, basically. I really don’t see the problem.”

“But Pride and Prejudice is a straight drama. It will throw the whole piece out of balance in the family scenes to have a drag queen mother!”

“So don’t be a drag queen!” he said, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice. “Look, you’re medium height and slim. Your features aren’t excessively masculine…” (At least he resisted calling me ‘baby-faced’.) “You have a flexible tenor voice. You could easily pull off a contralto. With a good wig and makeup, and in Regency dress, you will be quite convincing. Think of it as a challenge to your acting ability.”

I could see I wasn’t going to talk him out of this.

* * *

MacNair’s brief for my group was ‘to use selected material from the early chapters of the book to introduce the Bennet family, their (relevant) background, and their characters’. The scene would involve four of the five girls (Mary would be next door playing the piano), their parents, Mr Wickham, and the maid, Hill. So the eight of us duly assembled in one of the smaller seminar rooms at nine o’clock the next morning to make a start, which was delayed while the girls took the opportunity to laugh at me. Sad to say, the mockery was led by my own girlfriend.

“I can’t wait to see what you look like in your dress, Mama!” Holly said, chortling.

“Yes, Mama,” added Samantha. “You realise you’ll have to wear a corset!”

“Are you looking to win the ‘Best Actor’ or ‘Best Actress’ prize, Mama?” said Diane, who had had to settle for Kitty. Until then I had always liked Diane Simms, a quiet friendly little girl.

Douglas was smirking, enjoying my discomfiture. He had tried it on with Holly a couple of times, unsuccessfully.

“I see you girls are practising being ‘silly and immature’,” I replied sulkily. “I think you’ve got it down pat.”

Jack Bryce snorted, swallowing a laugh. He was the only other man in the room. We had always got on. He would be playing Mr Bennet, my husband (for God’s sake).

“Can we get on with this, please?” he said. “And let’s try and be grown-up about Dr MacNair’s strange ideas of casting, shall we?”

Sam and Diane looked suitably chastened. Holly just bristled.

“Well, I thought my boyfriend had a better sense of humour…” she began.

“And I’m certainly going to need it, aren’t I?” I shot back.

“It’s a good thing you’re not big and brawny like Jack and Douglas,” Holly said viciously. “You’ll probably make a very convincing middle-aged woman when you’ve got your corset and bloomers on.”

Where was this coming from? Had I done something to offend her?

“Thanks,” I said. “As if my self-confidence hasn’t already taken enough knocks today.”

“Sorry, Mike,” said Sam.

“Yeah, we didn’t mean to be hurtful,” added Diane. “It was just a bit of fun.”

I looked at Holly, hoping but not expecting an apology from her. None came, of course.

“Last time I help you get a leading part,” I said, quietly.

The others looked puzzled, as well they might. Jack cleared his throat in the hope of defusing the tension. It didn’t.

“Let’s try and work together as a team, huh?” he said. “Now does anyone have any thoughts about who should be our Director and Script Editor?”

“I think Mike should look after the script,” said Amy. “He’s really got a way with words.”

She had been landed with the lousy part of Hill, the housemaid, though she would be doubling up as Lady Catherine with one of the other groups. We could assume that Hill and Her Ladyship were about the same age, so Amy would be made up to look older – like me and Jack.

“But all the words will be Jane Austen’s,” Douglas objected.

“I second the motion,” said Jack, ignoring him. “Mike for Script Editor. “Any other candidates?” Nobody spoke. “Congratulations, Mike,” he said.

“Just don’t write a bigger part for yourself than is in the book, Mrs Bennet,” said Holly.

I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be welcome in her bed tonight.

“I suggest you’re the obvious nominee for Director, Jack,” I said, just in case someone suggested Holly or Douglas.

“I agree,” said both Samantha and Diane, almost simultaneously. Nobody demurred.

“OK, I accept,” said Jack. “Does our Script Editor have any ideas about what we should try and get into the scene?”

“I do, actually,” I said, thumbing through my copy of the book to find the passages I had marked. “We need to pack as much background exposition into ten minutes as we can, to present the characters and set the whole story up properly. Bingley and Darcy appear early on in the book, talking about renting Netherfield. But it’s very short and not really important. Anyway, we can’t use them; MacNair hasn’t put Derek and Rob in our group. The key scene is Mrs Bennet telling her husband about Bingley’s arrival. It actually happens outside the church in the book, but there’s no reason why we can’t do it all at Longbourn. I think we can set our scene in the house and involve just the Bennet family. Also we can mix Kitty and Lydia’s squabble about the bonnet into the same scene. That will show the audience something about them too.”

“That sounds good,” said Jack. “I remember Dr MacNair talked about how much fiddling with the locations and the sequence of events you can get away with, and he said that when you’re adapting a book for the stage, you often have to join scenes together, change settings, and so on. We have to use our judgement.”

“I remember him saying that too,” said Hilary Dunn, who was playing Jane.

I was aware of Holly looking daggers at me, as so far I hadn’t given her character anything to say or do. She shouldn’t really be grumbling as she was in all three of the ten-minute pieces. She and Hilary would be going straight from this session to that of the Netherfield group at eleven. We would need to coordinate with their plans, but I thought their first scene should come immediately after our first.

“Then for our second scene we should do Lizzy and Wickham’s conversation at the Phillips’ whist party,” I continued, “when Wickham bad-mouths Darcy and starts off Lizzy’s prejudice against him. Finally, it would be good if we can include some of Jane and Lizzy’s dialogue from elsewhere in the book to show how they are more mature and sensible than their younger sisters.”

Holly was mollified, at least partly. She knew her part would be much bigger in our other scenes.

Jack was looking worried. “I can’t see us fitting all that into ten minutes,” he said. “We’ll have to shift between the pieces very quickly.”

“Well, it was only some ideas to get us going,” I said. “Why don’t we start with that lot, then decide what to cut when we see how long it runs?”

“Maybe MacNair will let us do fifteen minutes,” Amy said. “He sounded like he’d be flexible.”

Everyone agreed, so we all opened our copies of the book and started looking at it together in detail.

* * *

The first planning session went well. We went through several scenes in the book together and agreed the rough shape of our time and what would be in and out. I slipped away quietly at the end and didn’t wait to talk to Holly. I went back to the flat to pick up some dirty washing and a few other things, then to my bedsit on campus. After our petulant and public disagreement, I thought it might be a good idea for us to spend a little time apart.

I only went to my small, poky room occasionally to get clean clothes and pick up any snail mail, so I hadn’t been there for a few days. I put a wash on in the launderette in the basement and settled down with my copy of Pride and Prejudice and my laptop to try and write up what we had worked on that day.

It wasn’t hard to envisage the Bennet family dynamic: the younger girls arguing; Mrs Bennet haranguing her husband to get him to meet Mr Bingley; the older girls watching the goings-on with amusement; Wickham attempting to charm Lizzy. There was a good scene between Jane and Elizabeth where they talked about marrying for love or money…

What I struggled to do was see myself as the frantic family matriarch. My imagination just wasn’t up to it. I was sure I was going to make a fool of myself.

The accommodation block’s laundry room was hot and sweaty. There were four washing machines and the same number of tumble dryers, but I was the only person using them today. My wash in the machine’s little window rotated scornfully, reminding me that soon I would be forced to wear some very different clothes…

Then Holly burst into the room.

“So there you are!” she said, in a tone that suggested she had caught me hiding from her, which I suppose I had. “In the basement, sulking! Bit of a cliché, isn’t it?”

“I had things to do,” I said, pointing at the washing machine.

“Well, you might have told me where you were going.” She stood angrily between me and my washing, her hands on her hips. “I’ve been looking for you for hours!”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? Because I assumed we’d be spending the rest of the day together. We’ve got a zillion things to talk about! Planning our weekend. How we think the show is going. The Summer Ball. And we haven’t decided how we’re spending the Long Vac yet…”

Talk about a ‘butterfly mind’…

“I thought you were upset with me…”

“What made you think that?”

“Because I was upset with you!” Honestly, could the woman really be that insensitive?

“Well, really, if you can’t take a little leg-pulling…”

“You said I was small and weedy and effeminate!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did! You said it was a good thing I wasn’t tall and strong like Jack and bloody Douglas Miller, as I would make a good middle-aged woman. You certainly didn’t mean that as a compliment! Perhaps you should go and be with Jack or bloody Douglas Miller.”

“Is that what you want?”

Of course, I didn’t. But to say that would be me apologising to her, when it should have been the other way around.

“Is that what you want?” I said.

It felt like a yawning chasm was opening up in front of my feet, and Holly was on the other side of it. There was silence. She slumped down in a chair beside me.

“Of course it isn’t, you damn fool. You’re the best thing in my life. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only good thing.”

What the hell did she mean by that? I thought she was happy at home. Having been there many times since our schooldays I knew her parents well; they were good people. Still, I felt the abyss starting to close up. I might be on slightly firmer ground…

“Well, I could have done with a little support today. You know I’m going to be terrible in this show; Mrs Bennet is an awful part, and I’m going to make a complete fool of myself, and everyone’s going to laugh at me for all the wrong reasons…”

“None of that has to happen,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I was so nasty to you today. It was meant to be banter, but I accept that I got carried away. I never expected you to be so sensitive about it.”

She couldn’t apologise without making it half my fault, of course.

“I’m going to tell MacNair that I can’t do it,” I said.

“No, you’re not! Mrs Bennet is a great part. You’re going to do it; I’m going to help you; and you’re going to be brilliant, and win Best Actor, or maybe Best Actress…”

She had always been able to render me speechless. This was just one more time.

“Now,” she said, brightly, “what should we do for lunch? I’m starving.”

* * *

And she did help. In fact, I would have been lost without her. We watched all the TV and film dramatisations we could find, and decided to try and pitch my performance somewhere between Alison Steadman’s over-the-top vulgarity and stupidity, and Brenda Blethyn’s desperation and helplessness.

We went through all my lines together to help me find Mrs Bennet’s voice. I had to learn not just the words but the pitch and intonation, phrase by phrase. I had to use the top of my range without squeaking in falsetto. It was a constant challenge. When trying to vary the tone for different emotions, it was all too easy to let my voice drop down to masculine levels. Eventually I was managing to strike the right tone for a hysterical, not very bright, middle-aged lady of the Regency period.

But the really hard part was movement. I had to learn to take smaller steps and walk on tiptoe with my elbows cocked and my wrists limp. I had to get my hips and butt swinging from side to side. When I lost concentration I would regress into taking masculine strides with my arms swinging like a squaddie on parade. What made it even more difficult was that I dreaded being caught walking like a woman when I was supposed to be Mike.

Holly was reassuring. “It will all be much easier when you get the costume on,” she said. “In a corset and long flowing skirts you will have to move as an older woman. You won’t have a choice.”

“Terrific!”

Next: Dressing Mrs Bennet