Family gatherings during the holiday season are a universally acknowledged experience. You know, the simultaneous dread and excitement, dodging probing questions about your love life, gossiping about family members who’re in the other room, rehashing old dramas, and adding fire to new feuds.
In Live Arts’ holiday offering, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, characters new and beloved navigate the most joyous time of the year. Set in England in 1815, two years after Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the romantic comedy sees four of the five Bennet sisters gather at Lizzy and Darcy’s mansion to celebrate Christmas.
With Jane and Bingley expecting, Lizzy and Darcy having tied the knot, and Lydia still married to the diabolical Mr. Wickham, it’s middle-sister Mary’s time to step into the spotlight, and perhaps find love after the arrival of an unexpected gentleman.
Marianne Kubik was brought on to direct the play, which calls for knowledge of period movement and dialect. A UVA professor of movement and acting and a Jane-ite herself, Kubik is no stranger to Austen’s characters—in 2022, she directed Kate Hamill’s Sense and Sensibility for UVA Drama. Kubik is a longtime Live Arts collaborator, but Miss Bennet marks her first time directing for the community theater.
Kubik went through multiple rounds of casting and callbacks to ensure she found the perfect actors and partnerships.
“I did my best to consciously put aside the characters that I know from Pride and Prejudice because this isn’t the novel, it’s a complete imagining of a previously imagined story,” says Kubik. “I wanted to look at the humans who were coming in to audition, and think about who might pair well with whom.”
“It was worth spending all that time on callbacks because the cast really has bonded,” Kubik says. “They seem to enjoy each other’s company, and they certainly enjoy each other’s company and work on stage, and that shows.”
To play Mary, the iconic and curious black sheep of the Bennet family, Kubik cast Austen Weathersby—whose namesake is none other than Jane Austen. Benedict Burgess tackles the role of her potential paramour, Arthur de Bourgh.
Chemistry came naturally for the two actors, who first met at Live Arts 15 years ago, and grew up attending the theater’s camps and workshops.
“This whole show is a bit of a family reunion for me,” says Burgess. “I remember the very first scene that Austen and I did together, I thought she was absolutely fantastic. It’s a scene where Mary is tearing Arthur a new one verbally and she was so good, I just kept breaking. It wasn’t very professional but it was really fun.”
Embodying characters who exist in another time period can be a challenge. Weathersby and Burgess relied on their own lived experiences, and their interactions as scene partners, to find their characters’ motives and mindsets.
“Mary is very different in this play than the person she is in Pride and Prejudice,” says Weathersby. “She’s grown a lot and developed a lot and is really finding herself. A lot of my process was going to the script and picking out specific things that I could relate to myself and things that I could research, like her interests in music, science, travel, and really try to dig into those and discover what she loves about those things.”
Arthur de Bourgh is an entirely original character, created by Miss Bennet writers Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, so Burgess couldn’t reference the original book or any other versions for inspiration.
“A lot of the stuff that I put into Arthur, I put in from myself because I feel a lot like him at times,” says Burgess. “He’s someone who’s kind of awkward and shy, but who still feels things very keenly and deeply and wants to express it, even if he doesn’t always have the right words for it.”
“Mary and Arthur are very different from Lizzy and Darcy and Jane and Bingley, and yet just as romantic,” Burgess continues. “They have these just absolutely passionate ideas about who they are and what the world is and what they want out of life. I think that’s going to be a very nice treat because it’s still a romance, but it allows you to see a very different kind of romantic hero.”
Immersion in Mary and Arthur’s world is made easier for Weathersby and Burgess thanks to scenic designer Kerry Moran’s gorgeous yet homely interpretation of Pemberley, and costume designer Megan Hillary’s elegant empire-waist gowns and well-fitted waistcoats.
Much like its unofficial prequel, Miss Bennet retains Austen’s signature relatability and commentary on marriage and a woman’s place, while also giving audiences new characters to root for.
“There’s a warmth to the whole piece that I really appreciate, especially for this time of year, and I appreciated how it all relates to a lot of the emotions that we feel today,” says Weathersby. “I think that’s a hallmark of Jane Austen’s work—it’s extremely relatable even though it’s a completely different time period with different social rules. I think this play reflects that just as beautifully.”