Risking everything for a forbidden love…
Peppered with comedy, David Kerby-Kendall’s Gay Pride and No Prejudice is the story of two men and one woman’s struggle for acceptance in an era when the few retained the right to judge the many.
Darcy has loved Bingley since they were boys. At first through the innocent lens of childhood, but now the hunger to play childish games has been replaced by a more dangerous desire. For if Darcy admits his love, will Bingley and the judgemental lens of adulthood cast him out of Society?
It is 1812 and a few self-appointed men have kidnapped God and democracy. They have decided, in their absence, that two men must never be together. Bingley has accepted this and so attempts to fall for the demure and lovely Jane Bennet. Darcy, already suffering, falls foul of Jane’s sister, the not-at-all demure, Elizabeth (Lizzie). Lizzie is outspoken in her wish for gender equality: for husbands to take their wives’ surnames and, ‘horror of horrors’, for a woman to eventually become Prime Minister. But her prejudice toward Darcy’s pride and wealth begins to melt when he proves himself an outspoken advocate of women’s rights.
Bingley seeks Mr & Mrs Bennet’s feelings about marriage (“Mrs Bennet and I were deliriously happy for 18 years…and then we met”) in order to plan a perfect – but false – future with Jane, and it is ultimately he who must decide between an assumed happiness or his love for Darcy; a love that, in the 19th century, ‘dare not speak its name’.
Directed by Luke Fredericks.
Union Theatre, Old Union Arches, 229 Union Street, London, SE1 0LR from 8 October – 2 November 2024. Times: Tuesday to Saturday: 7:30; Sunday: 4pm. Admission: Full Price £23.00; Concessions £18.00; Previews & Tuesdays £16.00.
Booking: http://uniontheatre.biz/
