About the Play:

Pride and Prejudice is a full-length romantic comedy adapted for the stage by Kate Hamill, based on the beloved novel by Jane Austen. This playful adaptation gives the story we know and love an unconventional updating. In Regency England, love is a serious game, and the Bennet sisters are playing for keeps. But when marriage is a must for women, how will they be able to tell if they've won? This clever comedy offers a decidedly progressive take on the trials of Lizzy, Mr. Darcy, and the whole Bennet clan, with a few dance breaks thrown in for good measure.

Pride and Prejudice concerns two couples for whom the course of true love is farcically bumpy. The outspoken Lizzy Bennet is determined to never marry, despite mounting pressure from society. But with four sisters, an overzealous mother and a string of unsuitable suitors, it's a difficult subject to escape. When the independent Elizabeth meets the vaguely handsome, mildly amusing, and impossibly aggravating Mr. Darcy, all feelings of attraction are muted by his pride and her prejudice. Literature's greatest tale of latent love has never felt so theatrical, or so full of life than it does in this effervescent adaptation. Because what turns us into greater fools…than the high-stakes game of love? This isn't your grandmother's Austen! Bold, surprising, boisterous, and timely, Kate Hamill's celebrated adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is both reverently devoted to the source material and remarkably hilarious, moving, and full of theatrical surprises that bring one of the greatest love stories ever told to extraordinary theatrical life.

Pride and Prejudice premiered in 2017 in a short run production at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, New York. It was a critical and box-office hit, and the production was remounted off-Broadway by Primary Stages at the Cherry Lane Theatre and was extended in that run three times. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across the US and has been mounted by high schools, colleges, and community theatres.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male, plus 3 any gender (doubling)

What people say:

"Hamill…has a gift for condensing three-volume novels into galloping two-act plays. Her screwball Pride and Prejudice…is as frolicsome as her earlier efforts. It hasn't met a rib it can't tickle." — The New York Times

"The ever-ingenious Hamill has given us something completely and delightfully different, a smallish-cast period-dress Pride and Prejudice…adapted with fizzy, festive freedom, Hamill's [Pride and Prejudice] is full of Bringing Up Baby-style slapstick and the kind of barely controlled chaos that you'd expect to see in a five-door Feydeau farce…." — Wall Street Journal

"…a laugh-out-loud adaptation… Hamill…give[s] Austen's novel a deliciously antic sensibility…This Pride and Prejudice has comedy at its heart, but regarding the treatment of women, it shows us enough unsettling similarities between the 18th century and now to make us pause thoughtfully between laughs." — TheaterMania.com

"Hamill's Pride and Prejudice has fun and charm to spare…[it] is full of high spirits and genuine mirth…Hamill excels…as a condenser of the story and a conveyer of fun. She cleverly squeezes Austen's wide-ranging drawing-room comedy into the bodies of eight actors, almost all doubling to delightful and even moving effect." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist whose penchant for witty social commentary, celebrated romantic plots, and feminine perspective make her one of the most celebrated authors in British literature. Her novels deal primarily with the social lives of English landed gentry, especially the expectations of and about women, and the necessity of securing a good marriage. Although Austen herself never married, novels like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma are considered classics of the early nineteenth century romantic genre and are still widely read today.

Kate Hamill is an American actress and playwright. As playwright, she is known for her innovative, contemporary adaptations of classic novels for the stage, including Sense and Sensibility (in which she originated the role of Marianne) and Pride and Prejudice (in which she originated the role of Lizzy Bennet).