Review: THE WATSONS at Little Theatre, University Of Adelaide

Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Sunday 3rd August 2025.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen. It is being celebrated with university lectures, concerts of her favourite songs, after all, she played and sang, as Dr Gillian Dooley has chronicled, a celebratory quilt, yet another remake of Pride and Prejudice, and a four-part television series. That being said, there can’t have been, and probably won’t be anytime soon, a tribute as uproariously funny and as intellectually intriguing as this Theatre Guild production of The Watsons, directed by Matthew Chapman.

I’d booked some days in advance in order to share the experience with theatre-loving family members. This was a wise move as, by the afternoon of the first matinee, the entire run of the show was booked out. I would have liked to have entered the Little Theatre completely ignorant of the content of the play. There was such a surprise waiting. I had some thoughts. Playwright, Laura Wade, had more than a few, turning this unfinished novel into two or so hours of sheer delight.

The play begins in the familiar milieu of Austen’s upper-middle class. Emma Watson, the eldest sister of a hopeful family of sisters, has returned home, empty-handed and, sadly, unmarried, from her time as companion of a wealthy aunt, whose new marriage dispenses with Emma’s service. Imogen Deller-Evans, whose name harks back to an almost unknown Shakespearean heritage, has the elegance and intelligence, fitting her for her place among the Austen leading ladies. Her siblings are Elizabeth, Laura Antoniazzi, Margaret, Lucy Johnson, and Harry Passehl, as Robert. David Lockwood is their bedridden father, who brings so much to so little.

Austen lovers and, equally so, lovers of Georgette Heyer, already have a strong sense of familial duty, and the limited options society affords to young women. This could play out on stage along expected paths, except that this is a play by Laura Wade. She must have sat through A-level (she’s British) lectures on Austen and social structure from high school, hoping that something might trigger a 20th-century response in someone. If no one else is prepared to do it, she’ll do it herself.  She’s the playwright whose play, Home I’m Darling, was a success at the Arts Theatre, directed by Jude Hines two years ago. There, a household from the 1950s lays itself open to the audience, until the illusion is punctured by the appearance of a personal computer.

Here, in an environment where human relationships play out as the steps of a familiar dance, new forces are suddenly at play; new pressures, new realities and new possibilities loom through the web of time. While the settled classes, soldiers, ministers of religion, country squires and their ladies play out their assigned social roles, their servants are paying attention. This may not be The Marriage of Figaro, but the servants know so much more about the masters and mistresses than the upper classes know about their servants.

In The Watsons, it turns out that the servant is, indeed, the Playwright Laura Wade who has plans for the story and the characters involved. On that Sunday afternoon, the first part of the play was a little slow, but the second exploded with imagination as the characters realised that they, themselves, had a hand in the direction of their lives. Rousseau and Hobbes are celebrated, then the Nanny, Angela Short, confronts the men with the name of Mary Wollstonecraft. Suddenly, the political and economic environment of the Austen era makes itself felt. Spoiler: Nanny accepts a proposal of marriage from Lady Osborne, Lindy leCornu, whose purple turbaned presence is one of the joys of the show. It takes decades to develop that level of hauteur. Lady Catherine de Burgh and Lady Bracknell are in the wings.

In that first act, it was interesting to watch how Rebecca Kemp’s Laura’s 21st-century manner was so clearly contrasted with what we see as the colourful elegance of the 18th century, which was wonderful if you married or inherited money and status, but not so much if you died of tuberculosis. The setting is minimal, but the costumes are stylish, empire line frocks, voluptuous cleavages, and scarlet uniforms.

The work by some of our most familiar Theatre Guild performers and some new faces, however, was an absolute joy. I have not laughed so much at the theatre in God knows how long.

When the Watsons received a phone call from Napoleon Bonaparte, my heart leapt.

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3. BILLY ELLIOT (Northern Light Theatre Company)

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