Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com

ACT ONE

Overture
Choices: First Impressions
Isn't She Wonderful?
When I Fall in Love
My Dearest Jane (First Letter)
Silly Girls
He Thinks/She Thinks
Meeting Mr. Collins
I Aim to Please
Meeting Mr. Wickham
My Dream
The Netherfield Ball
Dancing with Mr. Collins
Dancing with Mr. Darcy
The Bennets Expose Themselves
The Netherfield Ball (Reprise) 
My Poor Nerves
Not Romantic
My Dearest Jane (Second Letter)
The Proposal
The Refusal

ACT TWO

Entr'acte 
Choices: Second Chances
Take a Walk
Darcy's Letter
Had I Been in Love
I Can't Resist a Redcoat
The Portrait Song
She Thinks He Thinks
I Can't Resist a Redcoat (Reprise)
I Think You're Wonderful
Miss Bennet
Fine Eyes
Finale

Review: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (at NYMF)

2011 Marianya.com/

The New York Musical Theatre Festival is a musical only festival that appears on the New York theatre scene that takes in some of the strongest full productions of up and coming musicals from across the country and gives them the chance to show off their stuff in the heart of New York City.

Every year presents a new crop of productions trying to find their footing and every year there has been standouts. This past year is no exception

For the past several years there has been an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice going through the theatre circles, with a demo session in JASNA Chicago one year, and a one night full production performance in Rochester, New York a few years back.

If one were to do a search for “Jane Austen”, “pride”, “prejudice”, and “musical” there would be a whole crop of productions and attempts that various composers, lyricists and writers have attempted throughout the years. So how would this be any different than the rest?

What the creators: Lindsey Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs have done differently was not just take the story of Pride & Prejudice and put it on stage, but they included the “character” of Jane Austen into the production. Confused yet? Originally Pride & Prejudice was known as “First Impressions”, when Jane Austen sent the manuscript around it was rejected time and again to the point that she shelved the script and began work on Sense & Sensibility.

Later after the success of S&S, with the world itching for another story it is believed that Jane Austen took the story of First Impression and rewrote it heavily into the story we now know as Pride & Prejudice. This musical production not only goes through the storyline we all know and love, but what sets this show apart for the theater goer is that we also see the “author” of P&P and follow her as she edits, reviews, and changes her original manuscript into a masterpiece.

Sometimes Jane Austen (masterfully played by Donna Lynne Champlin) would simply write the story with her character enacting what she wrote verbatim. Sometimes she would struggle with words and her characters would choose for her, and every now and then her characters would simply recite exactly what is on their minds and Jane Austen would just transcribe them word for word. For anyone out there that does fictional writing this should be relate-able on some level.

In the New York Musical Theatre Festival incarnation of the production, the transitions between scenes was absolutely fluid, with the cast aiding in the scene changes. The dance sequences not only added to the story but also moved the storylines along so it isn’t just fluff. The chorus / ensemble numbers were spot on, and the individual performances exceeding expectations on a number of levels.

To this theatre goer, the male performances clearly outshined the female performances (aside from Donna’s interpretation of Jane Austen). Darren Bluestone is absolutely adorable and lovable as the smitten Charles Bingley, while his best friend Fitzwilliam Darcy is every girl’s dream realized by Doug Carpenter. What Doug brings to Darcy is a sense of vulnerability to a character driven by prejudice and pride only for his defenses to be broken down by a slit of a girl, his story arc isn’t just believable but profound as well.

Matthew Schneider is an absolute riot as Mr Collins, and seems to wear the robe of comedic relief for the production. His mannerisms, laugh, and characterization were not just spot on, but took everything to a whole new plateau that I haven’t seen in other productions of Pride & Prejudice.

Jane Bennet, as portrayed by Margaret Loesser Robinson, is believable and heartbreaking countered to perfection by Patricia Noonan’s Elizabeth Bennet. When these two actresses act and interact you could see the chemistry and connection that sisters ought to have.

With some actors/actresses playing dual roles perhaps one of the most surprising is the decision to have Marguerite Willbanks play not only the shallow matriarch Mrs Bennet, but also the insanely imposing Lady Catherine de Bourgh. At first glance I did not realize that both character were being played by the same actress, it wasn’t until I started reading the bios that I was pleasantly surprised. The strength of this actress is to play both characters in such a way that audience members would simply forget that it is the same actress and that is a pleasure to watch.

If there is something that needs tweaking it would undoubtedly be the length of the first act, which honestly cannot be helped because of just how much backstory and set up is needed to get the ball rolling. Quite honestly I did not notice how much time had passed until intermission and in retrospect I do not believe there is much else that the creators could cut to shorten the time in Act One.

Unfortunately the production’s run via the New York Musical Theatre Festival has come to an end, but I highly recommend keeping an eye (or an ear) out for this gem of a production. I’ve been following this for several years now and after seeing the show at NYMF, I am firmly keeping one ear to the ground in hopes of seeing an incarnation pop up soon… like on Broadway.

 

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

by Zak Risinger on 10.8.11

Book, Music and Lyrics by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs
Directed by Igor Goldin
Produced by NYMF (New York Musical Theatre Festival)
Off Off Broadway, New Musical
Runs through 10.11.11
The Signature Theatre Company, 555 West 42nd Street

 

 

Patricia Noonan and Doug Carpenter in JANE AUSTEN'S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Photo by Peter James Zielinski.

BOTTOM LINE: A solid musical adaptation of a classic piece of literature.

It's clear to see why Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has quickly sold out its limited NYMF run at The Signature Theatre. In a festival where many works are being thrust in front of the eyes of New York audiences for the first time and are asked to bring their A-game, Pride and Prejudice presents itself as a piece of polished theatre. This musical has already had several productions out of town and even brings most of the cast from these productions to strut their talents here in New York City. So it’s no wonder that what the audience sees is a smartly crafted and flushed out piece of musical theatre. 

Playwrights Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs have taken Jane Austen's classic tale and put a slightly interesting spin on it. Instead of merely telling the story of Pride and Prejudice, they have chosen to have Jane Austen (brought to life with great complexity and nuance by Broadway veteran Donna Lynne Champlin) be an ever-present narrator of sorts who is busy crafting the tale in front of our eyes as she tries to create a follow up hit to her smash success Sense and Sensibility. It is a very interesting convention that allows us to look at the story's characters in a very different way.

 While the musical's score is beautiful and masterfully sung by the two leads, Patricia Noonan and Doug Carpenter, I feel that some of the songs hinder the great storytelling that Baker and Jacobs have created. At times it seemed like a song existed just for the sake of there being a song when I would have much preferred the show to rely on the strength of the book. Case in point: the songs sung by the two parents come across as a little “one note” and might have been summed up in a short scene rather than an entire song that doesn’t really propel the plot forward. A great example of a truly remarkable musical moment is the skillfully understated performance of Jennifer Waiser as Charlotte Lucas who delivers a touching and heartfelt rendition of “Not Romantic,” in which she muses on the practicalities of love versus marriage. Although it is brief, it stood out as one of the strongest and most memorable moments of the entire show.

The fact that I can be this picky about a show at NYMF, which showcases musicals at various stages of development, is a testament to the strength of Pride and Prejudice. Don’t get me wrong, it is a solid piece of musical theatre that will thrill fans of Jane Austen to the very core. A huge part of that success is due to the masterful direction of Igor Goldin who manages a cast of 20 with a great sense of ease and finesse. The period choreography by Jeffry Denman also helps create the world of Jane Austen society quite nicely. And one would be remiss to not single out the breakout comedic performances of Matthew Schneider as wealthy, fabulous Mr. Collins and Jacque Carnahan as Lydia Bennet, the saucy younger daughter.

If you’re a fan of sweeping romantic musicals and/or Jane Austen, you will flip for Pride and Prejudice. While it’s not a perfect piece just yet, it is well on its way to greatness. One small suggestion from this reviewer: perhaps a title change would serve the piece well. I would think that something along the lines of Pride and Prejudice: According to Jane Austen or According to Jane: A Tale of Pride and Prejudice might let the audience know that they are not seeing a straightforward telling of Jane Austen’s classic work and might expand their perspective. No matter what you call it, Pride and Prejudice has won over critics and audience members in New York and it is clear to see why. With only one sold-out performance left, if you don’t already have your tickets you'll likely miss the chance to see this production, but I’m sure you’ll see countless regional productions popping all over the country. And who knows? With such success at NYMF, Ms. Austen might have life yet here in New York.

 

Uh Oh, a Pride and Prejudice Musical? Don't Worry, It’s Pretty Amusing (GO!)

IMAGE: musical-show-1.jpg

Jenny Lower | April 27, 2015 |

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a story in possession of a built-in fanbase must be in want of a musical adaptation. But even to Jane Austen fans, the notion of reworking Pride and Prejudice with a score may seem ill-advised, if inevitable. After definitive film renderings, modernist updates, and Austen-flavored concoctions, must we suffer the indignity of Darcy, master of Pemberley, singing and capering about?

Happily, the outcome is thoroughly enjoyable if occasionally ridiculous. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, A Musical, a world premiere directed by Igor Goldin at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, Jane Austen (Bets Malone) is still an emerging novelist, having just earned her first break with a sold-out print run of Sense and Sensibility. (According to the press notes, the show too was something of a hit when it premiered at the New York Musical Theatre Festival, where it collected a Most Promising Musical award.) Jane’s publisher is eager to see more, but she has nothing else stashed in her writing desk — save an abandoned draft of a half-finished work called First Impressions. After the cajoling of her sister, Cassandra (Jill Van Velzer), Jane begins to reread the novel’s opening pages and conjures Elizabeth Bennet (Patricia Noonan), Darcy (Brandon Andrus), their families and neighbors onstage.

The accomplished book by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs, who also created the music and lyrics, retains much of Austen’s wry humor and narrative voice. Jane remains an active presence in her own story throughout the play, both in command of and beholden to her characters, editing on the fly and meting out hard-headed plot twists. Under Timothy Splain’s music direction, the vocal performances are strong. The arrangements themselves, though somewhat generic, at times perfectly suit the book's tone and material. The thematic significance of one musical motif, “Choices,” is unclear, seeming to refer to both authorial decisions and the limited range of life paths available to women (and perhaps, the author’s own regret). However, a rousing number with Lydia (Arielle Fishman) and her swoony redcoats choreographed by Jeffry Denman, and an ecclesiastical paean by Mr. Collins (a brilliant Jeff Skowron) to his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Amanda Naughton), are especially effective.

The musical covers so much ground — virtually all the novel’s major plot points in the three-hour running time — that depth is inevitably shortchanged. With Jane Austen upstaging her character’s intelligence, Lizzy comes off as rather more wide-eyed and girlish than the novel’s prose lets on. Noonan and Andrus’ chemistry isn’t always as crackling as it could be, but their interactions still elicit pleasant flutters of anticipation.

Thankfully, the rest of the cast is so strong that time spent away from Elizabeth and Darcy never feels like a chore. Even some of the book’s more tiresome characters, such as Caroline Bingley (Jamison Lingle), Mrs. Bennet (Naughton again), and stick-in-the-mud Mary (Kimberly Hessler) make pleasurable company. If you’ve ever longed to hear Fitzwilliam Darcy belt out his admiration for Elizabeth’s “Fine Eyes,” now is your chance.

La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd., La Mirada; through May 10. (562) 944-9801, 

More Background On Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com

Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com preserves the history of an ambitious theatrical adaptation of one of the most enduring novels in English literature: Pride and Prejudice. The website was for a number of years the official online home of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, A Musical, created by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs, and much of the material preserved there dates from the period surrounding the musical’s appearance at the 2011 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF).

The site is particularly interesting because the musical it documented did not disappear after its early productions. Instead, the project continued to evolve. The work eventually became known as Austen’s Pride: A New Musical of Pride and Prejudice, with further regional productions, a Carnegie Hall concert, a cast recording, amateur licensing and, ultimately, a commercial touring production.

That makes Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com more than a remnant of a discontinued theatrical website. It represents an earlier stage in the development of a musical that has continued to change for more than two decades.

At the heart of both the website and the musical is an unusual approach to Austen. Baker and Jacobs did not simply dramatize Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy’s courtship. Their central theatrical device was to put Jane Austen herself onstage, imagining the novelist revisiting the manuscript originally called First Impressions and interacting with the characters who would eventually inhabit Pride and Prejudice.

The result is simultaneously an Austen adaptation and a story about artistic creation.

Who Created the Musical?

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, A Musical was written by Lindsay Warren Baker and Amanda Jacobs, who jointly received credit for the book, music and lyrics.

The collaboration dates back much further than the musical's 2011 New York breakthrough. Jacobs later wrote that she and Baker began creating the show in 2000. Over the following years they developed it through workshops, readings, productions and extensive revisions. Songs were written, discarded, rewritten and rearranged as the structure evolved.

Baker's background encompasses directing, writing, composing, teaching and performance coaching. Her theatrical work has included collaborations with Jacobs on projects such as Lily, A Musical Portrait, Truth in Beauty: A Shakespeare Sonnet Project and Daniel, The Musical. She has also worked as an acting instructor and dramatic coach at the Eastman School of Music.

Jacobs is a composer, playwright, pianist and educator whose work extends beyond musical theater into concert and sacred music. Her interest in Austen eventually went beyond simply adapting the novelist's fiction. She participated in the Jane Austen Society of North America's International Visitors Program and spent time in Britain studying and composing in places connected with Austen.

The long collaboration between the two writers is important to understanding Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com. The website did not represent a quick theatrical adaptation designed around the popularity of Austen. It documented a project that had already undergone years of experimentation before reaching NYMF.

The Musical's Distinctive Concept

Countless theatrical, film and television adaptations have retold Pride and Prejudice. Baker and Jacobs needed a way to make their version distinctive.

Their solution was Jane Austen.

Instead of treating Austen as an invisible author, the musical turns her into an active character. Austen revisits First Impressions, the earlier version of the novel, while Elizabeth, Darcy, the Bennets and the other characters materialize around her.

As the archived site explained, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy's romance unfolds while Austen transforms her earlier manuscript into the novel that will become Pride and Prejudice. The writers characterized their concept as intertwining two love stories: the famous romance within Austen's novel and Austen's own passionate relationship with her creative work.

This device allows the musical to operate on several levels. Audiences receive the recognizable pleasures of Pride and Prejudice—Elizabeth's intelligence, Darcy's reserve, Mrs. Bennet's matchmaking, Mr. Collins's absurdity and the social maneuvering surrounding marriage—but they also see a dramatization of the creative process.

Austen sometimes controls her characters. At other times, they seem to surprise or resist her. Writing becomes something that can be staged dramatically rather than merely described.

That became the defining feature of the work and remained central as the musical evolved into Austen’s Pride.

Early Development and Rochester Connections

The musical has particularly strong connections with Rochester, New York.

Both Baker and Jacobs had Rochester ties, and the project was developed there well before its NYMF appearance. In 2008, Playbill reported on a concert presentation in Rochester featuring a cast that included Donna Lynne Champlin, Laura Osnes, Colin Donnell, Rory O'Malley and other established or emerging Broadway performers.

At that stage the work was called Pride & Prejudice, A Musical Play. It had been optioned for a proposed Broadway production, and contemporary reporting described plans that were then aiming toward a 2009 Broadway opening.

Those plans did not materialize on that timetable, but they illustrate how seriously the project was already being developed several years before NYMF.

A 2008 University of Rochester/Eastman School of Music news roundup also cited local reporting that producer Lori Bajorek had received commitments approaching $1 million toward taking the Rochester-created musical to Broadway.

The show's development was therefore not a straight line from small workshop to NYMF to regional production. It involved repeated attempts to find the right commercial form, producers and theatrical environment.

The 2011 New York Musical Theatre Festival

The major public breakthrough documented by Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com came with the 2011 New York Musical Theatre Festival.

The production was selected for NYMF's Next Link Project and played the Peter Norton Space at the Signature Theatre complex at 555 West 42nd Street in Manhattan. BroadwayWorld reported that only six performances were scheduled, beginning September 29 and concluding October 11.

Donna Lynne Champlin played Jane Austen. Patricia Noonan appeared as Elizabeth Bennet and Doug Carpenter as Fitzwilliam Darcy, with Igor Goldin directing.

The festival environment itself posed unusual challenges. Baker and Jacobs' production blog described how multiple shows had to share the same theater, requiring productions to coordinate storage, scenery and technical requirements. Shows could have less than an hour to load in and roughly 30 minutes to load out.

Such constraints make the musical's later recognition for direction and overall design particularly noteworthy.

The NYMF run also generated genuine audience interest. A contemporary review described the limited run as quickly selling out and characterized the musical as unusually polished for a festival work.

Awards and Recognition

The 2011 NYMF production became an important milestone because the musical accumulated an unusually broad group of festival honors.

Among the awards listed in connection with the production were:

• Most Promising Musical
• Excellence in Direction for Igor Goldin
• Excellence in Writing: Book
• Stage Entertainment Development Award
• Excellence in Overall Design
• Outstanding Individual Performance for Donna Lynne Champlin

The production also received honorable mentions in music, lyrics, orchestration, choreography and ensemble performance.

The breadth of those honors mattered. Recognition extended beyond the writing to acting, directing and physical production, suggesting that NYMF audiences and adjudicators were responding to the project as a complete theatrical work rather than simply an interesting literary adaptation.

The musical later received another significant development boost when it was selected as one of three winners of MainStreet Musicals' 2014 festival season, with John Lithgow serving as jury chair.

The Music and Structure of the Show

Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com also functioned as a resource for people interested in the show's score.

Its archived song listing demonstrates the challenge Baker and Jacobs faced: compressing a lengthy and densely plotted novel while providing enough musical space for character development.

Act One included numbers such as "Choices: First Impressions," "Isn't She Wonderful?," "When I Fall in Love," "Silly Girls," "He Thinks/She Thinks," "I Aim to Please," "My Dream," "The Netherfield Ball," "My Poor Nerves," "Not Romantic," "The Proposal" and "The Refusal."

Act Two included "Choices: Second Chances," "Take a Walk," "Darcy's Letter," "Had I Been in Love," "I Can't Resist a Redcoat," "The Portrait Song," "She Thinks He Thinks," "I Think You're Wonderful," "Miss Bennet," "Fine Eyes" and the finale.

The titles reveal how the score balanced romance, comedy and introspection. Some songs deal with major emotional turning points, while others exploit Austen's comic characters and social situations.

One particularly revealing example is "I Aim to Please," Mr. Collins's number. Jacobs explained during the show's development that it was conceived as a Gilbert and Sullivan-influenced patter song and had roots going back to material presented at a Jane Austen Society of North America gathering in 2002.

That detail demonstrates just how long individual pieces of the score were tested and refined.

Recordings and Notable Performers

The website also preserved information about musical selections recorded with an impressive group of performers.

Those recordings featured Donna Lynne Champlin as Jane Austen, Laura Osnes as Elizabeth Bennet, Eric Ulloa as Darcy, Sebastian Arcelus as Wickham and Bingley, Patty Goble as Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine, Jim Stanek as Mr. Collins and other performers. Recording took place at Sear Sound in New York.

The presence of performers such as Champlin, Osnes and Arcelus gives the site's historical material additional significance for musical-theater followers. Several artists associated with the work during its developmental period built substantial Broadway, television and theater careers.

Critical Response in New York

Reviews of the NYMF production generally recognized the musical's professionalism and distinctive concept while also identifying areas that could be refined.

One 2011 review summarized the production as a solid musical adaptation of a classic and emphasized how polished it appeared compared with works often seen at developmental festivals. The reviewer particularly admired the decision to turn Austen into an active participant in the creation of her novel.

The same review was less enthusiastic about every element of the score, arguing that some songs slowed storytelling that was already strong on its own. "Not Romantic," Charlotte Lucas's musical reflection on love and marriage, was singled out as an especially effective moment.

Another review noted that the Austen framing device could occasionally become distracting but praised several melodies and specifically highlighted "Not Romantic," "The Netherfield Ball" and related romantic material.

This mixture of praise and criticism is revealing because the musical continued to be revised. NYMF was an important success, but it was not the endpoint.

The 2015 La Mirada World Premiere

A major next chapter arrived in Southern California.

From April 17 through May 10, 2015, La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and McCoy Rigby Entertainment presented what was billed as the world premiere of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, A Musical.

La Mirada Theatre is located at 14900 La Mirada Boulevard in La Mirada, California, southeast of downtown Los Angeles and near the Los Angeles–Orange County boundary. The venue has long been known for Broadway-style regional productions and has worked extensively with McCoy Rigby Entertainment.

Igor Goldin again directed, providing continuity with the NYMF version, while Jeffry Denman choreographed and Timothy Splain served as music director.

Bets Malone played Jane Austen, Patricia Noonan returned as Elizabeth Bennet and Brandon Andrus played Darcy.

The La Mirada engagement gave the creators something a festival production could not: an extended professional regional run with the infrastructure of an established theater.

Reviews of the La Mirada Production

The Los Angeles production generated another substantial round of press coverage.

TheaterMania described the work as a world-premiere musical and focused on Austen's position as the adaptation's heroine. Other reviewers responded to the unusual relationship between the author and her fictional characters.

A contemporary audience review praised the concept of Austen attempting to control characters who sometimes seemed to acquire minds of their own. It also praised the cast, comedy, costumes and simple but elegant production design, although the reviewer found the music less memorable than the theatrical experience itself.

Another Los Angeles review found the result highly enjoyable despite moments of silliness. It praised Baker and Jacobs' book for preserving Austen's wit and narrative voice and highlighted comic material involving Lydia, Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine. The criticism centered largely on the difficulty of fitting virtually all of Austen's plot into a musical reportedly running around three hours.

That challenge is fundamental to adapting Pride and Prejudice. Austen's novel contains not merely a central romance but interconnected relationships involving Jane and Bingley, Lydia and Wickham, Charlotte and Collins, the Bennet family and Lady Catherine. Retaining those elements while adding Austen's own story inevitably produces structural pressure.

From Pride and Prejudice to Austen’s Pride

Perhaps the most important thing a modern visitor should know is that the story documented by Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com did not end in 2015.

The musical continued to evolve and eventually emerged under a new title: Austen’s Pride: A New Musical of Pride and Prejudice.

The title change places greater emphasis on the element that always distinguished Baker and Jacobs' adaptation—the presence and personal journey of Jane Austen herself.

Austen’s Pride was produced at A.C.T. of Connecticut in 2019 and later that year at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre. These productions represented further stages in a long developmental process that had already stretched across nearly two decades.

The work's modern creative team continued to include Baker and Jacobs as writers and Igor Goldin as director, while Lisa Shriver became choreographer and Jacobs remained responsible for orchestrations.

Carnegie Hall and the Cast Recording

A major milestone arrived in June 2023 when Austen’s Pride was presented in concert at Carnegie Hall.

The cast included prominent Broadway performers, with Mamie Parris appearing as Jane Austen, Olivia Hernandez as Elizabeth Bennet, Andrew Samonsky as Darcy and Tony Award winner Beth Leavel as Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

The concert was recorded.

In 2024, Playbill announced that the Carnegie Hall performance would become a live cast album, with the full recording scheduled for release on streaming platforms on June 28, 2024. Individual tracks were released in advance, including "Darcy's Letter."

For a musical that had existed in development since approximately 2000, the recording represented an important form of permanence. A theatrical production disappears when its run ends; a cast recording allows the score to circulate independently of any particular staging.

Schools, Amateur Theater and a New Generation

The musical also developed a notable relationship with educational and community theater.

As early as 2011, Edmonds Heights K-12 in Washington produced what the creators described as the first high-school production of the show. Jacobs subsequently met with participating students and musicians to discuss both their production and the writers' creative process.

More than a decade later, that educational interest remained strong.

In 2024 the producers of Austen’s Pride announced that stock and amateur performance rights would be made available to selected organizations for a limited period. Producer R. Erin Craig explained that the decision followed numerous requests from schools and amateur groups.

This aspect of the musical's history gives it significance beyond professional theater. Austen remains widely taught in secondary schools and colleges, and a musical adaptation provides students with another way of engaging with the novel's characters, language, social restrictions and treatment of women's choices.

A Commercial Touring Production

The project's long development eventually reached another major stage.

In 2025, Austen’s Pride launched a commercial touring production. Contemporary program material identifies Fitzwilliam LLC and a group of theatrical producers and organizations behind the production, with Broadway & Beyond Theatricals providing exclusive tour direction.

Olivia Hernandez starred as Jane Austen, with Igor Goldin directing and Lisa Shriver choreographing.

Program materials for the 2025–2026 season explicitly traced the musical's path through A.C.T. of Connecticut, the 5th Avenue Theatre, Carnegie Hall and a 2025 production at STAGES St. Louis.

In other words, the project whose 2011-era history survives at Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com ultimately developed into a work capable of reaching audiences around the United States roughly a quarter-century after Baker and Jacobs began writing it.

Ownership and the Role of the Website

Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com should be understood primarily as a historical promotional website associated with Baker and Jacobs' musical rather than as a large commercial media property.

The preserved material identifies Baker and Jacobs as the creators and provides direct contact information for the writers, along with theatrical representation through Bruce Ostler at Bret Adams, Ltd.

During its active period, the site's practical purpose was straightforward: explain the musical, introduce its creative personnel, document awards, provide production news, present music information and establish a professional point of contact for people interested in the property.

Today its value is different. It provides a snapshot of how the musical was being presented at a particular stage of its development.

The current continuation of the property is represented by the Austen’s Pride identity and its own official online presence.

Audience and Popularity

There is no reliable public evidence that Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com itself ever attracted mass web traffic, and it would be misleading to describe it as a highly popular general-interest website based solely on the musical's theatrical achievements.

Its importance was niche and targeted.

The natural audience included Jane Austen enthusiasts, musical-theater fans, theater professionals, prospective producers, regional theaters, educators, performers and members of organizations such as the Jane Austen Society of North America.

Evidence of theatrical demand is stronger than evidence of website traffic. The NYMF engagement sold strongly, the musical attracted professional regional productions, its creators reported interest from schools, and the work continued to receive investment and development over many years.

Its most valuable "popularity" metric, therefore, is longevity rather than page views.

Cultural and Social Significance

The musical belongs to a much larger cultural phenomenon: the extraordinary afterlife of Jane Austen.

More than two centuries after Pride and Prejudice appeared in 1813, Austen's characters remain active in film, television, theater, novels, fan communities and popular culture. Every adaptation faces the same problem: audiences often know the story before the curtain rises.

Baker and Jacobs responded by shifting the perspective.

Instead of asking only whether Elizabeth and Darcy will overcome pride and prejudice, the musical asks audiences to consider Austen as an artist making choices about those characters.

That introduces themes that extend beyond romance: women's authorship, artistic identity, creative control, professional ambition, second chances and the relationship between an author and her work.

It also allows a historical female writer to occupy the center of her own theatrical universe rather than remain an invisible name attached to someone else's adaptation.

The later title Austen’s Pride makes that purpose especially clear.

Why Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com Still Matters

Viewed today, Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com captures one chapter in an unusually long creative journey.

The project began around 2000. Material was being presented to Austen enthusiasts by the early 2000s. Rochester became an important development center. Broadway ambitions emerged by 2008. NYMF brought the musical national theatrical attention in 2011. MainStreet Musicals recognized it in 2014. La Mirada staged its professional world premiere in 2015. Revised versions appeared in Connecticut and Seattle in 2019. Carnegie Hall hosted a concert in 2023. A live album followed in 2024, and a commercial touring production launched in 2025.

Seen in that context, the old domain is a digital artifact of theatrical development.

It records what Pride and Prejudice, A Musical looked like before it became Austen’s Pride.

For Jane Austen fans, it documents a distinctive reinterpretation of a familiar novel. For musical-theater followers, it illustrates how new musicals can spend years—or decades—moving through workshops, readings, festivals, regional productions, recordings and commercial development.

And for anyone interested in the history of the web, Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com demonstrates another valuable function of preserved websites: retaining the intermediate history of creative works whose stories continued long after their original sites ceased to serve as their principal promotional homes.

Pride-Prejudice-Musical.com