It wasn’t Jane Austen’s subtlest move, naming her roguish soldier George Wickham.
It wasn’t Jane Austen’s subtlest move, naming her roguish soldier George Wickham. As countless GCSE English teachers have patiently read in generations of essays, his surname sounds a lot like wicked – and wicked he is. Adrian Lukis, who played him in Andrew Davies’ 1995 TV adaptation of
Pride and Prejudice, reprises the role in the perfectly pleasant
Being Mr Wickham, livestreamed this past weekend from the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds by the Original Theatre Company. It’s Wickham’s less-than-successful attempt to clear his name of the mud Austen dragged it through in her novel.
BACK in 2016 at a campaign rally in Iowa, Donald Trump boasted that support for his presidential campaign would not decline even if he shot someone in the middle of a crowded street. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, ok? It’s, like, incredible.” Trump was highlighting the loyalty of his supporters, many of whom would tell reporters and pollsters that almost nothing could make them change their mind about voting for Trump in the presidential race. Nobody could accuse Boris Johnson of shooting anyone but over the past weeks accusations have been made against the Prime Minister by a range of people from his own ministers, such as Jonny Mercer who resigned in protest at the Government’s broken promises, through to his former adviser Dominic Cummings blogging about the Prime Minister’s untrustworthiness.
Published:
7:00 PM April 28, 2021
Adrian Lukis as Jane Austen s dashing rogue George Wickham in a new play from Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, Being Mr Wickham, which explores the former soldier 30 years after Pride and Prejudice
- Credit: Original Theatre Company
The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, emerges from lockdown by staging a live online broadcast of Being Mr Wickham – a new play exploring the character of George Wickham, Jane Austen’s duplicitous soldier in her classic novel Pride and Prejudice.
The role of Wickham is being revisited by actor and co-author Adrian Lukis who first played the part in the BBC’s classic 1994 production opposite Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
To Olivia
Remember Goodbye Christopher Robin, the wonderful film that looked at how Winnie-The-Pooh came to be written and the impact it had on A.A. Milne’s young son?
Well, if you liked it, do give this a go. It sets out to do something similar with Roald Dahl, examining the heartbreakingly poignant circumstances in which Charlie And The Chocolate Factory came to be written.
Hugh Bonneville is surprisingly effective as the curmudgeonly and often drunken Roald Dahl, while Keeley Hawes (above) delights as his glamorous film-star wife, Patricia Neal
Hugh Bonneville is surprisingly effective as the curmudgeonly and often drunken Dahl, while Keeley Hawes delights as his glamorous film-star wife, Patricia Neal. MB Sky/NOW TV, from Friday