From the page to the screen and now the stage with a twist. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice gets a chaotic, immersive makeover in Plied and Prejudice, coming to His Majesty’s Theatre. Presented by Alex Woodward, this five-person comedy sees class, pomp and etiquette thrown out the door… especially when one cast member becomes “indisposed” each night.
With more than 20 musicals and productions to his name, producer Alex Woodward has carved out a niche in ‘gateway theatre’, drawing new audiences into the arts. Emily Smith chats with Alex about the making of Plied and Prejudice and the logistics of putting the ‘plied’ in Plied and Prejudice.
How did Plied & Prejudice come about? Are you a Jane Austen fan?
Growing up my parents both loved Pride and Prejudice and both loved Jane Austen. It wasn’t that I had a deep connection to it, but I knew how well it was loved. And I love creating and commissioning comedy shows.
I spent some time in New York and I saw this show called Drunk Shakespeare and I really loved it. They’ve done this incredible job of taking a classic text and making it really watchable for anyone. It’s a way to present classic literature in a contemporary way so everyone can have a good time, whether you’re a massive mega fan or whether you’re just someone’s plus one, you can still come along and have a great time and get a great understanding for the work. So, I saw that and I started thinking, there’s all these amazing classic texts, why hasn’t this been done for others? I thought, well, Pride and Prejudice is the perfect one because there’s such a love for the piece. There’s this writer I work with all the time in Brisbane and I knew he would be perfect for it. We started spit balling ideas on how it could work and it just kind of happened.
And then all of a sudden, we put it on Brisbane and we thought we’d run for like five weeks and then we extended, and we extended. We ended up running like seventeen, eighteen weeks. We didn’t even want to close. We just had to because the venue kicked us out. They were like, “guys, we need the venue back”.
We had some people we worked with in London come. They loved it and so now it’s up in London as well. So yeah, it just kind of happened and the response has been incredible.
Plied and Prejudice – Credit Guy Bell
You say you like to make “gateway theatre,” why is this so important to you?
I suppose, it’s hard for me to comment directly on Perth, but I can comment on places I’ve lived, like Brisbane and Melbourne. There’s this real thing where the subsidised theatre world – the state theatre companies – are really catering to this subscriber-based audience. They have government KPIs they have to hit, and I think that’s really important and that’s not in any way trying to invalidate the work that they do. But they’re catering to a specific audience and I don’t think they’re necessarily capturing people that haven’t spent a lot of time in theatre spaces.
It’s not attracting John and Jen from the suburbs who have maybe never seen a play in their life. So, gateway theatre to me is theatre shows that anyone can come to and have a good time.
It’s the gateway drug to maybe going and seeing something at a subsidised theatre company or a commercial play or maybe a musical. You might come and see one of our shows on cabaret and go, oh, maybe I’ll go and see the Book of Mormon, or I’ll go and see this Agatha Christie that’s on at His Majesty’s, when that’s something that maybe they wouldn’t have thought about otherwise. I find it more exciting to get someone into a theatre who hasn’t necessarily had that experience because that grows our arts economy and that means we put more bums on seats.
So, Plied & Prejudice is like a cabaret experience where you can make a night of it. It’s not stiff upper lip, it’s fun, and the cast will joke with you, and they might pick on you.
How are you putting the ‘plied’ in Plied and Prejudice?
It’s already chaotic in the sense that you have five actors playing twenty main characters, scrambling to get the entire book done in ninety minutes. But also, one actor does four shots at the start of the show and then they continue to drink more throughout the show if the audience don’t think they’re drinking enough. The other four actors try and keep it all on track. The fun part of that is every night is slightly different. Obviously, it’s all scripted, but inherently things change every evening which is fantastic.
Plied and Prejudice – Credit Guy Bell
The Perth cast has just been announced and they have very varied bios. What do you look for when casting this show?
This is the third time we’ve cast the show with a different cast. Obviously, we need people who have acting training or music theatre training. Quite often, musical theatre people are really good because they’re quick and nimble. But we also look for personality, because if people in their everyday life are bouncy and quick witted, that translates into shows like this. We look for people who are naturally upbeat, fun, silly, happy to take the piss out of themselves. The show doesn’t suit someone who potentially went to RADA and wants to do Waiting for Godot. We want actors who want to have fun on a daily basis and are happy for things to adjust on the fly and change and react to a different audience.
It seems that this style of performance is perfectly suited for the Australian sense of humour. Have all your casts been Australian?
Yes, 100%, even in London our cast is mostly Australians. As Australians we’re very good at taking the piss out of ourselves and we don’t take things too seriously, and that’s what we want from the show. We want people to come and go, oh, that was dumb and that was a fun night out.
You’ve performed in shows like Book of Mormon and Grease, how did you get from there to producing shows?
From when I was eighteen to thirty-two, I was performing and playing in bands, but at the same time I was always hustling and I was booking tours, I was putting on shows. I’ve always loved the producing aspect of it. From 2015 to 2020 I put on ten shows while still performing. I really love that aspect. I feel like when you’re an actor in a show it’s like you’re a part of a watch, and when you’re a producer, you’re the watchmaker. You get to put all the cogs of the watch together. As an actor you’re subject to everyone else’s will, but as a producer I can create my vision.
Does your acting experience help in your work as a producer?
I think it does give me a really great perspective, because it helps me problem solve and helps me understand from both sides. I can say oh look, this isn’t fair to the actors, we need to get them XYZ to make sure that this can be achieved. It also helps to be realistic and go, well, yeah, guys, this is going to be a hard couple of weeks. But I’ve done it myself, I know what it’s like, and you’ll be fine. It’s good to be able to stand behind my words and say, I’ve done this, I know that you can do it as well.
Plied and Prejudice – Credit Guy Bell
Back to Plied & Prejudice, talk to me about the set. From the photos it looks more like a runway than a stage, how does that work?
Every space we go into is different, and so we accommodate for it. Downstairs at the Maj is an intimate space, so we adapt the set to it. Our London space is ginormous. Like, good lord, it’s ginormous. In Brisbane, we had a runway that was ten metres. In London it’s twenty-two metres. And here in Perth, it’s six meters.
So, for Perth the set is kind of runway meets stage, and we wanted it to be up close and personal. We didn’t want it to be us versus them, audience versus actors. We want to be traveling through them. It should be fun and playful and that comes through in the set design as well. It’s Regency, but contemporary. Regency style, but with Andy Warhol pop art and bright colours. It looks fun and it’s camp and silly and it’s enjoyable.
It sounds like a chaotic show, do you have any standout moments from previous performances?
Yes, but I don’t want to give spoilers. We’ve definitely had some funny audience interaction moments where audience members have really shined. Do with that what you will.
Plied & Prejudice previews on the 18th July and closes on the 17th August, at His Majesty’s Theatre.