Are The Bennet Girls Ok?
Written by Emily Breeze; Directed by Eric Tucker
West End Theatre | 263 West 86th Street, New York, NY 10024
September 14 - November 9, 2025
Photo Credit: Ari Espay
At this point in our cultural saturation, one might be forgiven for sighing at the announcement of yet another Pride and Prejudice adaptation. The Bennet sisters have graced countless stages and screens, corseted and coiffed to varying degrees of historical fidelity. But enter Are the Bennet Girls OK?, now playing at the West End Theatre, and one finds a production that doesn't so much revisit Austen’s beloved novel as hijack it—with irreverent glee and razor-sharp insight. Playwright Emily Breeze has fashioned a triumph of audacious reinterpretation: bold, bawdy, and unexpectedly tender.
Breeze’s script does not genuflect at the altar of Austen; rather, it gleefully rips pages from the novel, scribbles curse words in the margins, and sets the whole thing dancing to the beat of modern sensibilities. Gone is the elegant restraint of the Regency drawing room. In its place: unfiltered sisterhood, crumbling expectations, and dialogue peppered with f-bombs that feel not gratuitous, but earned. This is not an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice so much as an adaptation from it—a feminist remix that scrutinizes the structural injustices beneath the manners and marriage plots.
Emily Breeze’s adaptation deftly excavates the rich emotional strata that lie beneath the familiar veneer of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, shining an unflinching spotlight on the intricate tapestry of relationships that bind the Bennet women. Rather than merely retelling a story of courtship and social maneuvering, Breeze’s script pulses with the vibrant realities of sisterhood: the warmth of shared secrets and laughter, the exasperating trivialities and childish bickering that only those bound by blood can endure, and the sometimes jarring dissonances that arise when individual desires collide.
Most compellingly, Breeze captures the fierce, unyielding protectiveness these women harbor for one another—a fierce loyalty that, though often expressed in blunt or contradictory ways, forms the emotional backbone of the narrative. This adaptation refuses to flatten the Bennet sisters into archetypes; instead, it revels in their messy humanity, celebrating their resilience, their folly, and the indomitable love that ultimately sustains them through societal pressures and personal upheavals alike.
In doing so, Breeze offers audiences a narrative as emotionally textured as it is sharply observed, reminding us that beneath the trappings of period drama lies a timeless meditation on the complexity of familial bonds.
Elizabeth Bennet, portrayed with effervescent wit and unapologetic verve by Elyse Steingold, emerges in Are the Bennet Girls OK? not as the genteel proto-feminist of Regency lore, but as a thoroughly modern young woman with no interest in matrimony, decorum, or anything remotely resembling a suitor. Steingold is delivering a performance that refreshingly refuses to sand down the character’s edges. This Lizzy is not the arch heroine we’re used to admiring from afar—she’s petulant, ego-driven, brilliant, and deeply human. Her true passions lie elsewhere: namely, in the casual intimacy of sisterly squabbles, the ride-or-die companionship of her best friend Charlotte (a wonderfully grounded Deychen Volino-Gyetsa), and the Sisyphean task of managing the public meltdowns of her socially disastrous mother, Mrs. Bennet (the indomitable Zuzanna Szadkowski).
Elizabeth’s world is a cacophony of domestic chaos, anchored by her tempestuous relationships with sisters Mary (Masha Breeze, all morose brilliance), Kitty (Violeta Picayo), and Lydia (Caroline Grogan, delightful in her reckless exuberance). But her resistance to the marital meat market is tested when her sister Jane—the ever-serene Shayvawn Webster—is cast aside by the genteel but indecisive Mr. Bingley. That slight, seemingly romantic in nature, unleashes a more existential crisis: the brutal reality that the Bennet women, charming or not, clever or not, lovable or not, exist in a world that offers them little recourse outside of marriage.
Here, the stakes are not simply emotional—they are economic, legal, and devastatingly real. With the Bennet estate entailed away to the odious Mr. Collins (one of many roles performed with hilarious elasticity by Edoardo Benzoni), the family’s future hangs precariously on the tenuous hope that one of the daughters will wed well—and soon. Mrs. Bennet’s shrill exhortations, so often played for comic effect in other productions, gain urgency and pathos under Breeze’s dramaturgical lens: this is not a mother meddling in her daughters’ love lives for sport, but a woman fighting like mad against a system rigged to leave her daughters destitute.
Steingold’s Elizabeth may enter the play seeking only a reprieve from familial absurdity and romantic obligation, but the world won’t let her off so easily. And in watching her resist, relent, and reckon with her role in this fragile domestic order, we are reminded—sometimes through laughter, sometimes through lump-in-throat poignancy—that what’s at stake for the Bennet girls is not just who they will marry, but whether they will survive at all.
Romance, in fact, takes a back seat here. Mr. Darcy is but a footnote for much of the production—a bold move that allows Breeze to shine her spotlight on the rich, often neglected terrain of female relationships. The Bennet household, in this telling, becomes a hotbed of affection, annoyance, longing, and laughter. Masha Breeze (yes, the playwright’s sister) turns in an absolutely scene-stealing performance as Mary, typically the series' overlooked moralist. Here, she emerges as the emotional linchpin: hilariously offbeat, heartbreakingly sincere, and mesmerizingly odd. Her deliberately cringe-worthy musical performances (co-written with Emily Breeze) walk the perfect line between comedy and catharsis, offering some of the evening’s most memorable moments.
Zuzanna Szadkowski's Mrs. Bennet, meanwhile, is nothing short of revelatory. What could have been a caricature of maternal desperation becomes, in Szadkowski’s hands, a layered, unpredictable portrait of a woman navigating the relentless pressures of patriarchy with whatever weapons she can find—be they guilt trips, passive-aggression, or impeccable comic timing. Her transition from shrieking desperation to quietly devastating vulnerability is performed with such elegance that it nearly steals the show.
Edoardo Benzoni, tasked with playing all the male characters, approaches this Herculean assignment with mercurial brilliance. Each new jacket and accent brings a fresh persona, and while some of his roles remain sketch-like, they are unified by a sly comedic timing and a deft physicality that makes each transformation a true delight.
Production-wise, the show carries an air of deliberate dishevelment. John McDermott’s scenic design evokes a domestic space in genteel decay, leaning more toward squalor than subtlety. Mariah Anzaldo Hale’s period costuming cleverly supports the action, with particular credit due to Benzoni’s rapid-fire costume changes. Eric Southern and Cheyenne Sykes, tasked with the formidable challenge of illuminating a thrust stage—a configuration that so often exposes the limitations of traditional theatrical lighting—rise to the occasion with a design that is both technically astute and emotionally resonant. In a production so deeply rooted in relational nuance, they manage the delicate dance between illuminating ensemble chaos and individual intimacy with exceptional grace.
Credit must be given—indeed, generously bestowed—upon director Eric Tucker, whose assured hand and discerning eye orchestrate this spirited reimagining with remarkable finesse. It is no small feat to wrangle a beloved literary titan like Pride and Prejudice into an ensemble-driven, genre-bending theatrical romp, yet Tucker does so with an effortlessness that belies the intricacy of the endeavor. From the moment the production begins, it’s clear that Tucker understands the alchemy of theatrical storytelling: the ensemble is not merely well-cast, but rigorously unified, operating with the kind of collective rhythm and trust that allows each moment to sparkle individually while contributing to a seamless, harmonious whole. His use of the space is particularly inspired—the multi-level staging not only provides visual dynamism, but also reflects the social hierarchies, emotional stratifications, and chaotic entanglements at the heart of the piece. Tucker's sound design unfurls as a rich, sonically adventurous tapestry—an eclectic auditory journey that refuses to be confined by genre. From the stark dissonance of atonal experimentation to the earthy lyricism of traditional English folk, and onward to the sinuous rhythms and sun-drenched syncopations of Brazilian jazz, each musical choice feels deliberate, evocative, and finely attuned to the emotional landscape of the piece.
Scene changes are not treated as interruptions but rather absorbed into the action, woven fluidly into the performance with a choreographic precision that keeps the pace brisk and the momentum alive. Furniture is moved with intention, costumes shift mid-sentence, and yet nothing ever feels rushed or out of place. These transitions become part of the language of the play—a theatrical dialect Tucker speaks fluently. Tucker delivers a masterclass in contemporary stagecraft, balancing irreverence with respect, comedy with pathos, and invention with clarity. The result is a production that feels at once joyfully anarchic and tightly composed—a splendid evening of theater that breathes exhilarating new life into one of literature’s most enduring classics. The final emotional beats land with such grace and unexpected power that one finds oneself, perhaps to their own surprise, misty-eyed by the curtain call.
So, to return to the original question: Do we truly need another Pride and Prejudice adaptation? If it’s this self-aware, this subversive, and this joyously alive—then yes. A thousand times yes. Whether you’re a lifelong Janeite or barely know Bingley from Bennet, you’ll find something stirring—and perhaps even healing—within this vibrant, wickedly smart production.
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Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on October 9, 2025. All rights reserved.