Painfully relatable and tirelessly entertaining!
Unlucky in love? Tired of endless swiping? Tales of a Jane Austen Spinster might just be for you. It is a hilarious and unfortunately realistic adventure in modern romance, or rather, lack thereof. Liliana claws her way off the pages of an incomplete Austen novel in hopes of making her author finish her story; finding Austen to be long-since dead, she ventures into the modern world and quickly discovers both how much and how little the world has progressed.
Written and performed by Alexandra Jorgensen, this one-woman show is a woman’s delight. The writing is undeniably witty. Mixing laugh out loud comedy with not so subtle jabs at modern society, it’s enjoyable from start to finish. It’s a very conversational piece; Liliana speaks directly to the audience throughout, inviting us into the world as she understands it.
Jorgensen is a wonderful actress. Her high, affected voice and expressive face blend beautifully with the class and charm of a Jane Austen heroine. She oozed warmth and relatablility, putting voice to all the insecurities that pound away in the minds of women. Jorgensen did have several unfortunate line stumbles that disrupted the flow of her performance.
The details that help make a performance were well designed. The set was simple but immediately recognizable as the remnants of days past; the little hidden touches of modernity helped ease the viewers into the modern age. Jorgensen’s costume was beautiful. Delicate and classically tailored, paired with an elegant updo the image was only disrupted by her too-shiny, satin pink ballet shoes.
Setting the story in the Jane Austen House Museum was quite brilliant; it immediately created an environment that blended “faction and fiction”, as Jorgensen puts it. One of the few stumbling blocks Tales of a Jane Austen Spinster hit was the sequence during which Liliana explored the world outside her museum. It was not as smooth or clear as the scenes in the house and it dragged. The voiceovers trickled throughout were all flat and uncomfortably robotic; their AI style sound detracted from the story.
Tales of a Jane Austen Spinster is criticism at its most enjoyable. It is a love letter to the woman that questions where she belongs and wonders if her standards are too high. Relatable, hilarious, and honest, Tales of a Jane Austen Spinster is not one to miss.