So, one of the questions I’ve been asked most often since we embarked on Pride and Prejudice: The Panto is: ‘doesn’t By Jove only work with myths?’
This is completely true. But here’s the thing: Pride and Prejudice is, in fact, mythic. I should explain.
The way we define myth in the company is a narrative that transcends a single medium to the extent it is known in multiple forms and has gone through successive interpretations. For many myths there is a central version that remains definitive for artistic reasons – it must be constrained to the confines of the medium – but surrounding it are a host of parallel or derivative works that together amount to the corpus of a single myth.
Oh, Mr Darcy: the sight that set a million pulses racing.
Obviously Austen’s tale differs from, say, Oedipus Tyrannus or any other Greek myth. The latter is derived from cultural sources that have been reworked and transposed across media thousands of times – we might say it’s ‘high myth’, ‘pure myth’ or perhaps ‘classical myth’. In some ways Pride and Prejudice is in the same state of mythical evolution as Oedipus was back when Sophocles composed his crystallisation of the tale in the fifth century BCE. Oedipus is now known primarily through one or two versions for the stage (though those versions have been constantly reinvented). For Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand, its perception in 21st century Britain has become pluralised. It is not known via the book alone any longer: it is a book as well as multiple films, multiple television series, radio adaptations and graphic novels; it is emblematic of a genre, of an author, of an entire historical period. I wonder how many people’s conception of the early nineteenth century has been illustrated by the wardrobe department of the BBC’s television adaptation.
It is for this reason – the plurality of Pride and Prejudice as a cultural product – that it was the perfect source material for a literary panto. It is the familiarity of well-known narratives that underlies the humour in modern pantomime; audiences react to the blending of the old and familiar with the very current.
So if you’re a fan of Austen’s book or any of its interpretations, come join us from the 14th December and see how we’ll be making our own contribution to the Pride and Prejudice myth.
– David
