Canberra Repertory Society's first production for 2012 sees two significant anniversaries celebrated. Not only is it Rep's 80th birthday season, but it's also the 25th-anniversary production of Rep's Pride and Prejudice. It was adapted from Jane Austen's 1813 novel by John Spicer, who also directed the highly successful 1987 production for the company - and who died last November on the very day Rep's 2012 season was announced. Stephanie Roberts will play Elizabeth Bennet, one of five sisters. Their mother (Helen McFarlane) is obsessed with finding them all suitable husbands. When Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (David McNamara), a friend of the Bennets' neighbour Mr Charles Bingley (Lachlan Ruffy), comes to visit, he and Elizabeth do not hit it off well: his aloofness and apparent pride and her resulting prejudice against him are the major thread in a story in which courtship, scandal, secrets and revelations all play a part. Directing this new production is Duncan Ley, who's been associated with Rep as an actor and director since the mid-1990s. His last directorial assignment for the society was And Then There Were None in 2010 and he says it's ''a real honour'' to be chosen to direct this production. ''I studied Austen for my degree but I haven't enacted her on stage,'' he says - either as actor or director.
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He's seen a few film and television versions of Pride and Prejudice, including the 1990s BBC series with Colin Firth, which he thinks helped to lock the story into the public consciousness even more firmly than it already had been - and has created a different sort of audience with different expectations since 1987.
Because Pride and Prejudice is so well known, Ley says, ''there are no surprises embedded in the narrative. What it means as a director is that you can concentrate on other things, like subtly reinterpreting and re-editing the script to make it sharper.''
One of the reinterpretations concerns the clergyman Mr Collins (Sam Hannan-Morrow), who after Elizabeth rejects his overtures, marries her friend Charlotte Lucas (Katie Doney). ''That's virtually always portrayed as 'Poor old Charlotte agreeing to marry Mr Collins, sentenced to a life of trying to keep Mr Collins in the garden'.'' This production, he says, will try to show there is genuine affection between the two and that ''their marriage is quite a successful one''. And regarding Elizabeth's rival, Caroline Bingley (Anita Davenport), Ley says, ''She's often played as a jealous shrew and our production hints at that but also puts front and centre the reason she behaves like that is that she is herself head over heels in love with Darcy.''
Ley believes this production won't go against the grain of Austen but that he can afford to have things go on a tangent now and then. And, he says, ''There are subtle and playful references to the fact it is such a pop culture phenomenon, exploring its fictional roots rather than it being a historical piece.''
At heart, he says, Pride and Prejudice is ''a romantic comedy, a fiction, rather than being a slice of Regency life''.
While some of the set and costume changes might raise an eyebrow or two, he says, ''This is not film or television - we don't have the budget or desire to re-enact the Regency period.
''As long as the look and the writing are coherent, that should suffice, he argues, pointing out that it is ''de rigueur to go to a Shakespeare play and see people in modern dress or enacting a historical period different to the script.
''Why not do that to Austen?''
Pride and Prejudice, he says, ''like any good romantic comedy seems to be based on the desire, whether expressed or not, to find both security in life - often security with another person - and ... achieving a higher status than when you started''.
It has, he says, ''a perennial narrative, because it's what we try to do in everyday life: the search for contentment, which is a better word than happiness. Happiness is such an ephemeral state, isn't it? ... Contentment - that is possible.''
In Austen's time, he says, there wasn't the modern concentration on individuality and the demand to be happy; survival and social standing were important and contentment sat well within that framework.
But it is, he says, still a romantic comedy at heart, one that makes you feel good. ''Who hasn't, man or woman, wanted to kiss Mr Darcy?''
Given Darcy's central role in the Pride and Prejudice mythos, casting the role was obviously crucial.
Ley says, ''The first thing you do is not try to find the next Colin Firth.''
He chose David McNamara, with whom he had acted once before. ''He looks the part - tall, dark, handsome, sideburns,'' Ley says, and he thought McNamara and Roberts would look and act well together as Darcy and Elizabeth, characters who ''are never less than brutally honest: the social divide notwithstanding, the two of them are looking into a mirror when they look at each other.
''For all of us it takes time to get used to the feeling that a person is the mirror of us.''
McNamara admits to being a little daunted following in the footsteps of such actors as Firth and Laurence Olivier but is eager, after a run of musicals, to get back to straight theatre and provide his own interpretation of Darcy.
He sees the character as ''reserved, aristocratic but vulnerable ... and struggling with these emotions''.
He says Ley's approach and passion for the subject matter has helped to bring out a lot of the humour as well as the romance of the piece. Stephanie Roberts played Jane Bennet in a Free-Rain production of Pride and Prejudice a few years ago that used a different adaptation.
''The script is very different between the two productions,'' Roberts says. ''The other one had more of the scenes in the book; this one has more of the dialogue from the book.''
She says, ''It's very funny - Jane Austen's dialogue is still very fresh and her characters so well drawn.''
Elizabeth, she says, ''is still a very strong heroine, not a wilting flower, quite opinionated and obstinate - that's quite fun''.
And with that character coming up against Darcy's reserve and pride - qualities unlike the actor who plays him, she hastens to add - the stage is set for one of English literature's most famous and best-loved romances.
Pride and Prejudice has a preview on February 23 at 8pm, then is on at Theatre 3 from February 24 to March 17, Wednesday-Saturday at 8pm with 2pm matinees on March 3, 4 and 10. Tickets: Adult $38 Concession $32. Bookings: 6257 1950 or online at www.canberrarep.org.au
