Review: Pride and Prejudice - as you've never seen it before - wins standing ovation at Newcastle Theatre Royal

After a couple of hours or so in the company of the Bennet family in this inspired take on a Jane Austen classic, a fellow member of the audience asks a question that passed through my own mind during the show. As she leaves, she wonders 'what Jane Austen would have thought?'

It's clear from her smiles what she herself thought of this madcap Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) but she tells me anyway. She loved it - in fact the whole audience has just given it a standing ovation.

But back to the beginning, when we first meet the Bennet sisters and their mother - or rather the Bennet household servants as they are in their first incarnation at the start of the show as here a cast of five women play all the roles, males included. The rather insignificant Mr Bennet is reduced to an unseen figure in a chair, represented only by a cloud of cigarette smoke rising from behind a newspaper.

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And these fabulous five - and they really were - power through the tale of match-making mishaps with remarkable swift changes of role, sex and accents, occasionally breaking into song - the well-timed likes of Will You Love Me Tomorrow and You’re So Vain - and playing musical instruments. These are Austen heroines who under their pretty pink, blue and green regency frocks wear clumpy boots and are prone to giving sweary vent to their frustrations rather than tip toe through the niceties of society gatherings, with 1800s party time being captured here in scenes of free-flowing fizz, a pyramid of Ferrero Rocher and - for some reason - plates of wagon wheels.

They come out with the kind of things you can imagine Austen's respectable characters might like to say if not confined by good manners. If they got to hear such expletives in their time that is.

For all her wit and way with words, Elizabeth Bennet, played by Naomi Preston Low, resorts to a two-word message for Mr Darcy at one point and, as the latter, Rhianna McGreevy brilliantly inhabits the hero role, shedding Darcy's arrogance and aloofness as quickly as she takes off his jacket to become the over-emotional mother Mrs Bennet.

Then there's Emma Rose Creaner whose characters appear all over the place: from an Irish maid she's then eager Mr Bingley one moment; his hilariously horrible sister Caroline the next (another of my favourites) and also the lovelorn Charlotte, who here is given an unrequited love interest in her friend Elizabeth which is genuinely touching. All the cast deliver memorable characters, from sister Lydia's love interest George Wickham (Christine Steel) who has a fabulous smarm and swagger to the deathly dull Mr Collins (one of local actress Susie Barrett's roles) and Lady Catherine De Bourgh (Steel again): a force to be reckoned with in billowing red.

Throughout, when there's something to say, these Bennets just say it - or sing or shout it. Writer-director Isobel McArthur was out to bring to the fore the humour and heart that is in Austen's novel and what she saw as its radical feminism. Her take on Pride and Prejudice first made its debut in her home city of Glasgow in 2018 and soon became an award-winning hit.

So there was real excitement when the Theatre Royal announced earlier this year that it was teaming up with McArthur as well as Olivier and Tony Award-winning producer David Pugh on a new version of the show - to be the theatre's first co-production in more than 10 years.

And the result is a sparkling jewel of a show that's clever and, above all, just very funny. Once its Newcastle debut run ends on Saturday, it will embark upon a 35-date UK tour and it seems set for huge success.

If you're a Jane Austen fan you'll surely love it - it serves the story well - and if you're not a fan then you definitely will, as this is about as far away from a staid costume drama as you can get, with its physical comedy moments and flurry of f-words. Foul-mouthed - sort of - it's also fearless, funny and flippin' fabulous.