HAVING already platformed some comedy/ musical/ improvisation shows based on Jane Austen works – anyone for ‘Austen Found’? – performer Penny Ashton found that she herself is related to Austen’s beau, Limerick gent Thomas Langlois Lefroy. Thought to be the model for fancy-pants legend Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’, two of his nephews had emigrated to Western Australia back in the day.
And Ashton, a New Zealander, has Queensland antecedents through her Australian mother. “His nephew Gerald deCourcy Lefroy is my fourth great grandfather”.
She twigged, having seen the Austen movie biography ‘Becoming Jane’ about five years previously. The realisation seems to have been catalyst to brilliant effort as the show ‘Promise and Promiscuity’ she brings to Friar’s Gate, Kilmallock on November 3 and Belltable on November 9 has racked up awards and five-star reviews from Adelaide to Edinburgh.
Penny Ashton is a writer, actor, singer, dancer with a record of stand up comedy and improvisation. ‘Promise and Promiscuity’ is her solo show touring the UK and Ireland extensively.
“I sing and dance in this to classical pieces from composers of Austen’s day, Strauss, Bach. Robbie Ellis is a musician friend of mine who has arranged all the pieces and made them fit to the songs as I wanted.
“I have 33 quotes from Jane Austen’s works throughout in the [show], which is done in the style of Jane Austen.”
Other lyrics and words are her own and she wears darlin’ Regency rig-outs. As well as the central character Elspeth who wants to be a writer but her mother wants her to get a husband, Ashton plays another nine characters, male and female.
“I worked from about four of her books but for this show, the men are mostly from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and the women from ‘Sense and Sensibility’. The family name Slowtree is a vague nod to the Deathwood estate of ‘Sense and Sensibility’.”
We laugh, and laugh again at Elspeth’s nom de plume Wilbur Snide. Austen, an atrocious snob, was great to prick the priggery. The in-jokes are fast and furious in this glorious 90mins of homage and send up. The Ashton/ Austen style rattles along in this musical ripe with “comedy and innuendo”.
So, with various suitors and promiscuity invoked, does our pirate novella-writing Elspeth get a ride?
“Well, there are horses in it!”
www.limetreetheatre.ie for Belltable seats.
