Earlier this year, the off-Broadway 59E59 Theaters hosted a one-man show about the afterlife of Pride and Prejudice’s villainous Mr. Wickham, starring the actor who played him in the BBC’s iconic adaptation of the novel. (I caught the show last month and can report that it was delightful.)
Now the very same venue is rolling out a new show, and it’s a gender-swapped Pride and Prejudice updated to a farm in East Tennessee. With songs.
At this rate, 59E59 Theaters will become known as the New York home of theatrical P&P fanfic. (There are worse fates, right?)
The new show, Prejudice & Pride, which runs from July 13 through August 20, was written by Nicholas Collett and Sam Wright, who also stars in the Lizzy role and whose Kansas City folk band, Gullywasher, helped compose the fifteen kinda folk-y, kinda country songs. Developed in 2021, the show won an award at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival and had a short Kansas City run right before the New York premiere.
The story concerns a set of brothers who must marry rich to save the family farm. You will not be surprised to hear that their new neighbors are a single woman in possession of a good fortune and her even richer friend, who happens to be named Darcy. Like Wright himself, the Lizzy character plays the banjo.
Good stuff! It may be great, it may be terrible, but I’ll be there either way.