Sense and Sensibility review – lack of decorum drains tension from Austen adaptation

Pitlochry Festival theatre
A shapeless staging and knockabout jokes detract from the emotional heft of this tale of thwarted love

You might be excited to know that this adaptation of the Jane Austen novel comes complete with a soundtrack of pop songs. A show with close-harmony renditions of Beyoncé’s Halo, Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor, not to mention wine-bar versions of Poker Face and Good Vibrations, sounds like it could be the next Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), which combined sassy modernity with emotional truth.

Sorry to disabuse you, but no such luck – and not only because musical arranger Adam Morris gives the songs such maudlin settings. That could have added a lovelorn note to Austen’s tale of thwarted romance. No bad thing in itself, except it is not reflected in any other aspect of Adam Nichols’s shapeless staging, a co-production with Ovo in St Albans.