Longbourn is the very estate where the respectable Bennet family from Jane Austen’s great novel lived. The heroes of this book live in the same house as the heroes of “Pride and Prejudice.” But not on the upper floors—on the lower level, “under the staircase,” as people said in good old England. These are the ones Jane Austen mentions only briefly, mostly keeping “behind the scenes.” Those who cook, wash, clean—serving the Bennet family and working at Longbourn.
Life for the servants follows strict routine— the estate is large, there’s no end to work, and by evening everyone falls from exhaustion. But youth is youth. And love lives even on the lower floors…
Masterfully maintaining the style of the original, Jo Baker, in sets created long ago by Jane Austen, stages her own, absolutely original “production.”