In this interpretation of Pride and Prejudice, an actor preparing to play Lizzy Bennett in – er – an interpretation of Pride and Prejudice is interrupted by Jane Austen, who wants to revisit her most famous story. Talk about authorial intervention! As Lizzy flits between the character and the actor playing her, Jane takes her through the plot, in search of something she needs to know.

Jane insists on starting ten or so years beyond the events of the story, but prompts Lizzy to revisit her memories of that time. The world of Pride and Prejudice is directly encountered through dramatizations of Lizzy’s encounters with the significant men in her life: Mr Collins, Mr Wickham, and of course, Mr Darcy. Between those encounters, Jane and the actress analyse and deconstruct the plot, charting Lizzy’s growing awareness of Wickham and Darcy’s true characters and her changing feelings.

There is a lot of fun to be had in the moments when Bekah Sloan, playing Lizzy, breaks out of character.  She often does so with particularly un-Austen modern colloquialisms – “Life’s a bitch!”, she exclaims at one point, as she demands to know how Jane is going to sort out the plot to get her out of the mess she’s in. There’s a lovely lightness of touch as they deconstruct the text; is it “Narrative Theory or Pantomime?”  Eliza Cowley as Jane is both playful and intelligent, much as we imagine Austen, and the actors use the stage well, moving the action between simple but perfectly-in-keeping settings of a garden bench and writing desk.

Tom Burroughs, meanwhile, is very funny as Mr Collins; perhaps too good in fact.  His later Wickham and Darcy suffer in comparison, and aren’t as differentiated as they need to be. But ironically, what Ray Sutton’s script could do with less of is Pride and Prejudice itself. It’s hard to imagine that an audience for a play such as this would be unfamiliar with the novel – or at the very least, the TV and film adaptations – so the play doesn’t need such long scenes between Lizzy and her men. They lack pace and fun compared to the interactions between Jane and Lizzy, and drag the play out to ninety minutes, which is long for a Fringe production with no interval. It could easily be sharpened up to a more intense, fast-paced hour.

Without giving the game away, I was also not entirely convinced when we reached the end, and discovered what Jane had been trying to find out from Lizzy. I can understand where it comes from, but it relies on quite a conservative assessment of Austen which perhaps doesn’t entirely fit with modern mores.

All in all, the play seems in two minds as to whether it is a faithful tribute to Austen – or, dare I say it, a more “Fringey” interpretation.  But there is much to enjoy in the clever deconstruction of Austen’s text, which is far more entertaining than I remember schoolwork being.