It’s not that loving Jane Austen is a competition. If it was, I certainly wouldn’t win. (But I think I would be pretty high up there.)

It’s also not that Jane Austen’s books are so precious that they shouldn’t be played with. She’s super dead, so do whatever you want! I had high hopes going into Austin Playhouse’s new production of Kate Hamill’s Emma, directed by Lara Toner Haddock. The Barbie-inspired branding, bright colors, and the strawberry cottagecore decor all throughout the theater all cued that I was in for a nice, romantic time. The props design (Ismael Soto III) is dotted with fun anachronisms: pink solo cups at a party, a Caboodle for a makeover scene. The set (Mike Toner, Lara Toner Haddock) is smart, sharp, and transitions like a dream on wheels. The music (Robert S. Fisher) and dancing (Erin Ryan) take cues from Bridgerton, featuring Vitamin String Quartet covers of pop songs and dance moves that mix the traditional and the silly. The costumes by Buffy Manners are also clearly Bridgerton-inspired – colorful, flouncy, mostly typical of Regency pieces – except, oddly, our leading lady, who wears Chuck Taylors under her patterned green dress, never gets a costume change, and wears a badly clashing overdress to a party in the second act. Cher Horowitz would never.

This modern script by Kate Hamill premiered in 2022. It streamlines much of the side-plots of the Austen novel: Emma’s sister and brother-in-law are written out, Miss Bates is made the mistress of Harriet’s school, a band of gypsies is replaced by an off-stage swarm of wasps, and an entire character (Mrs. Elton) is played by an Avenue Q-esque puppet. The main beats remain the same, but ultimately do not exactly follow the spirit of the original as much as I would have liked.

The trick to Emma Woodhouse, I think, is that you do have to admit that she is spoiled, often conceited, selfish, and unkind, but she’s also smart, capable of change, tender to her family, and manages to always appear kind and pleasant. This Emma (Ella Mia Carter) is none of the good and too much of the unlikeable. Carter spends most of the show with her shoulders hunched and a scowl on her face, rolling her eyes, curling her lips, and commenting loud enough for anyone to hear. She is impatient, thrashes wildly when she doesn’t get her way, and makes faces in public. Emma’s embarrassment of Miss Bates – a turning point of character development in the novel – is not just a thoughtless barbed joke, but a screaming tirade full of personal insults. And all for what? After Mr. Knightley (Stephen Mercantel) later admonishes Emma for her outburst, Mrs. Weston (Sarah Zeringue) admonishes him for not understanding that Emma is just a frustrated young woman with nothing to do and no legal rights and no feminism.

Well, yes – it’s the 1810s! The stifling social mores and limitations on women are a feature of Austen’s stories, not a bug to be fixed and re-written. Emma is a fascinating character within the role she is dealt, even without yelling at her friend because she suffers from rich person ennui.

Mr. Knightley is far from his book counterpart as well. Hamill has shortened the age gap between Knightley and Emma to make things a little less icky, but where he is usually the only character that will call Emma’s bluffs, debate her at the level she desires, and eventually convince her to grow up, Mercantel’s Knightley is instead one that stoops to join Emma’s childish, spoiled tantrums. I feel no tender feelings because I am not convinced the two of them have any tender feelings towards each other. Where is the longing? Where is the yearning?

The rest of the cast of characters are goofy in a way that seems more natural. Michelina Haralson is delightfully dim and good-natured as Harriet Smith, Emma’s protégé. Bailey Ellis savors every bit of poetry he gets to recite as Harriet’s would-be suitor Mr. Elton. Nick Hunter’s Frank Churchill is a charming flirt, but his accent is the weakest on stage, out of a variety of skill levels. Once again, Austin Playhouse has no dialogue/accent coach listed in the program. It’s surprising that, at almost $45 a ticket, their actors seem left to their own study for something so integral to the characters.

Emma isn’t a bad play, and it’s certainly a take on the novel I’ve never seen before. Casual viewers may have fun with it. Audience members with more ardent feelings about Jane Austen might need to put those feelings aside for a few hours and simply enjoy the colors.

Photo: Steve Rogers Photography

Emma runs through June 30, 2024 at the Austin Playhouse (at University Baptist Church). For tickets and more information, visit Austin Playhouse online.