Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Elisa Cowley, Bekah Sloan, Tom Burroughs.
It is said that the profession that feels closest to the act of death is writing, the long lonely hours, the solitude, the feeling of other worldly existence and the remarkable pain and suffering that goes unconsciously with it, it can be seen as shaking hands with the great beyond, stepping into the light that comes with modern laptops.
The art of the novel though that goes even further, for in the act of bring characters to life, you are also preparing for the fact that as their creator, once those fictional individuals are out in the world, you have forever lost ownership of them, it is not the act of mimicking death but likened to the act of a powerful deity able to bring life from nothing and then seeing your creations disown you and find atheism an appealing bondage.
For the author, not even the answers though are known from the start and the act of ownership is a radical one, for those writers long since passed, their creations are even further out of their reach and control. In Ray Sutton’s play Jane and Lizzy, the act of ownership, of looking to take back control from those who use their characters in some sense of the gladiatorial combat to recognise their own short comings or exuberances in life, the actors or the scriptwriters who update and take the original message on in a different direction, is a world in which creator and creation can sit side by side and debate such philosophy.
When Jane Austen and Lizzy Bennett meet in a theatre hall, the feeling of the child distancing itself from its parent is well caught, the advice that both feel they should impart and receive somehow lost as one realises the extent of control that they are able to employ in bringing certain narrative displacements to the piece. The other the act of rebellion is that they somehow stilled, stunted and their modernism actually just seek a hereditary spark of illusion. It is such manners that the writer still believes they have influence.
The three actors give so much to this performance and yet quietly blend into the thoughts of the both Ray Sutton and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that the bonds between them are not shaken, there is no greatness more worthy than playing the part when playing the part in question. In Bekah Sloan especially as the actor Lizzy and the heroine Elizabeth Bennett, the juxtaposition between them melds seamlessly and with tremendous warmth and affection.
Jane and Lizzy is a play of great thought and one in which the writer is to be seen as the true star, so long ignored in most fields of creativity, the characters and the actors always more well known those who created them in the first place, Ray Sutton has provided a gracious antidote to that narrative manipulation. Exceedingly good and worth every penny!
Ian D. Hall