The Watsons Tickets
A new play by Laura Wade. Adapted from the unfinished novel by Jane Austen.
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If you enjoyed Home I’m Darling then you should certainly pick up a ticket for the latest from Laura Wade, whose previous plays also include Posh and the stage adaptation of Tipping the Velvet. This one is based on an unfinished novel by none other than Jane Austen. While it begins with frock coats and crinolines it pretty soon snow balls into something much more interesting than matrimonial games, love and money - as Austen’s scant five chapters run out and a 21st century playwright called Laura arrives on stage and breaks the news to everyone that they are all fictional characters. Directed by Sam West, Wade’s real-life partner, this is the lightest of confections but one that interrogates questions around fiction, art and female authorship.
About The Watsons
This thrilling new play from Laura Wade, the winner of this year's Olivier Award for Best New Comedy (Home I'm Darling), is making its London premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory after a sell-out season at the Chichester Festival Theatre last year. What happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is nineteen and new in town. She’s been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast. If not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse: an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife. Luckily there are plenty of potential suitors to dance with, from flirtatious Tom Musgrave to castle-owning Lord Osborne, who’s as awkward as he is rich. So far so familiar. But there’s a problem: Jane Austen didn’t finish the story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now? Based on her incomplete novel, this sparklingly witty play looks under the bonnet of Jane Austen and asks: what can characters do when their author abandons them?