Hot 100 No.3: Isobel McArthur

Tampering with the classics can be a risky business, but Isobel McArthur’s subversive take on Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice has garnered West End success and awards glory. Gareth K Vile catches up with the playwright and learns more about the hit show’s Scottish roots

Having won the Best Comedy Play at the Olivier Awards with Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), Isobel McArthur brought the show back to Scotland for a triumphant reminder that her take on Jane Austen (and the heritage industry that appears to have taken ownership of her work) manages to capture that spirit of the author’s wit within a thoroughly contemporary context.

McArthur herself recognises the importance of Scotland in the creation of this production. ‘It was really wonderful to bring it back to Scotland,’ she says. ‘The anxiety a few years ago on my part was that this was written for Glasgow: how will people in Leeds, Oxford or Newcastle react to it? Will they understand our sense of human, our cadence, and the bits of Scots language? But having performed across the country and in the West End, I had almost forgotten that what Scots find funny is not just gags, or the brilliant Austen stuff that is very relatable, but they back it politically as a transgressive gesture. To hear the text in Scottish accents, to puncture the starchiness of the Austen legacy with party rings, Viennettas and pineapple hedgehogs are things that Scottish audiences celebrate far more than anywhere else.’

This subversion makes Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of) such a distinctive take on Austen. While McArthur respects the author, she’s not afraid to foreground the excluded characters and challenge conventional ideas about the novels. ‘Glasgow is an influence; thinking about those audiences and my family and friends in the city, if I had said do you want to come to see a Jane Austen, they immediately would have said no! I knew it needed to be something that my own aunties needed to be willing to listen to. So, it needed pop music and karaoke, told by the servants, to undercut any snobbery, while using the emotional heft to keep the stakes alive.’ Against this, many popular versions of Austen feel staid and, ironically, out of sympathy with the novel’s tone. ‘The film adaptations are totally humourless,’ she adds. ‘That is baffling to me as it is a very funny book. And it’s about the struggles of normal people.’

McArthur emerged with theatre company Blood Of The Young, who embraced a DIY ethic and a desire to energise moribund dramaturgy with humour and innovation, and her direction of Pride And Prejudice speaks to an idealism that simultaneously adores theatre but is unwilling to conform to predictable processes. Avoiding the heritage route and adorning the story with familiar musical numbers that relate the characters to contemporary emotional tangles, McArthur and her collaborators appear to have found an expression of feminist performance that shares the lively playfulness of the ceilidh plays.