This tool is unavailable at the moment. Please try again later.
Start planning your production with a cost estimate you can save and share with your team. Just answer a few questions.
This estimator is only for amateur productions. Professional customers should contact the Licensing department directly to enquire about a title's availability: [email protected]
Important: The cost quoted is an estimate only and may differ when you apply for a licence.
A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE
Full-Length Play, Dramatic Comedy / 9w, 10m
Laura Wade
Based on Jane Austen's incomplete novel, this sparklingly witty play looks under her bonnet and asks: What can characters do when their author abandons them?
What happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is 19 and new in town. She's been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast.
If not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse: an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife. Luckily there are plenty of potential suitors to dance with, from flirtatious Tom Musgrave to castle-owning Lord Osborne, who's as awkward as he is rich. So far so familiar.
But there's a problem: Jane Austen didn't finish the story. Who will write Emma's happy ending now? Based on her incomplete novel, this sparklingly witty play looks under the bonnet of Jane Austen and asks: What can characters do when their author abandons them?
EMMA WATSON ELIZABETH WATSON MARGARET WATSON ROBERT WATSON MRS ROBERT MR WATSON NANNY TOM MUSGRAVE LORD OSBORNE LADY OSBORNE MISS OSBORNE MR HOWARD CHARLES HOWARD MRS EDWARDS MR EDWARDS OFFICERS OF THE MILITIA GUESTS AT AN ASSEMBLY LAURA
“Playful, clever and inventive.” – The Arts Desk
“Wade has seized on [the] tension between authorial control and imaginative freedom to create a stunning play.” – The Guardian
ON BREAKING CHARACTER
Alternative Austen: New Adaptations and Fresh Versions of Jane Austen Classics
Laura Wade is a playwright and screenwriter. Her recent plays include The Watsons (Chichester Festival Theatre and Menier Chocolate Factory) and Home, I’m Darling (National Theatre, Theatr Clwyd and the Duke of York’s Theatre), which won the 2019 Olivier Award for Best New Co ...