Two phenomenal monologues – by actors Eelco Smits and Just van Bommel – form the heart of it Pride & PrejudiceFlorian Myjer’s debut as a director at Theater Oostpool. You might want to wrap them up and take them with you to give as gifts to people if the situation calls for it. They are highly concentrated doses of comfort, recognition, new insight. And: sublimely played.
The starting point for Myjer’s performance was Jane Austen’s 1813 novel of the same name about Elizabeth, a young woman who, because of the pride and prejudices in the title, initially rejects her dream man but eventually – romcom avant la lettre – realizes her mistake and accepts his proposal.
The book was quite progressive for its time, with such a sharp, witty female narrator, and also because of Austen’s criticism of how women’s freedom of movement was structurally restricted. But in other areas (what Darcy, that so-called dream man, says, for example, and the way in which Austen dismisses female secondary characters – the ‘hysterical’ mother, the ‘heated’ sister) it appears that some progress has been made in the field of feminist consciousness over the past two centuries.
What particularly appealed to Myjer in the book is not the stale, romantic misunderstanding between Elizabeth and Darcy, but how compelling and harmful prejudices and expectations can be. And in particular, here, in the field of gender.
Classic in rapid succession
‘Soul murder’ is what writer, professor and political activist bell hooks called the form of self-betrayal that growing children, both girls and boys, are taught to thrive in a patriarchal system. How exactly this soul murder comes about, all the subtle (and less subtle) experiences that lead children from a very young age to disqualify a fundamental part of their emotional spectrum, and thus themselves, is what Florian Myjer explains in Pride & Prejudice investigates.
To this end, he has his three wonderful actors (in addition to Smits and Van Bommel, also Kharim Amier) drive through the plot of Austen’s classic at speed and with contagious playing pleasure, always slowing down when a statement about gender roles passes. For example, the long list of requirements that a woman must meet in Darcy’s eyes to be called ‘developed’. Or the hilarious scene in which Darcy (Smits) mansplains Elizabeth (Van Bommel) about traits that are ‘biologically speaking’ male or female.
Myjer intersperses this cheerful Austen parody with his own texts, partly created from conversations with the actors. They are simple anecdotes, told dryly, very cleverly dosed, about what it is like to grow up as a boy, when you do not fit within the traditional, male gender box. Some are touching, others choke your throat.
The highlight was those two incomparable monologues. Van Smits, about the loneliness that this toxic construct of prescribed gender roles causes – the feeling of inferiority, self-contempt, and envy too. And from Van Bommel, about the real insecurity that they, as non-binary people, experience on a daily basis, and how this makes a vulnerable attitude impossible, because it is literally life-threatening.
With his directorial debut, Myjer uses all emotional registers: from hilarious comedy scenes to intensely moving testimonies, from endearment to fury. This is what theater is for.
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