‘Pride and Prejudice’ coming to Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum
Next month, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University will bring Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” to the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden. Staged by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project (ASP), the award-winning theater company that brought “Fog x Macbeth” to the Arboretum in October, it is the last play of ASP’s season, and a fitting bookend to the haunting “Macbeth.” Though “Pride and Prejudice” is usually performed indoors, the gardens of Pemberley — the estate of the heroine’s suitor, Mr. Darcy — loom large. Elizabeth Bennet, the object of Darcy’s conflicted affections, is impressed by the openness of Pemberley’s landscape, a “place where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste,” and the gardens go a long way toward bringing her to reconsider her initial refusal of Mr. Darcy’s hand. In Austen’s time, the classically ordered Renaissance gardens were evolving a more natural look. The Arboretum’s...