Christmas with the Darcys and (Gasp!) the Wickhams

It doesn’t need to be the holiday season for fans of Jane Austen to crave some kind of modern sequel to her most popular works.

But it is in fact the holiday season — and playwrights Lauren  Gunderson and Margot Melcon have a gift for all Austen fans in the form of a series of Christmas-season plays featuring the Bennett sisters and their spouses and suitors.

Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Mass., produced the first of these plays, “Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley,” in 2017, the year after it debuted at the Northlight Theater in Chicago. The story revolves around bookish middle sister Mary, who finds love with a cousin of Mr. Darcy.

This year’s Christmas show will be the second play based on “Pride and Prejudice.” It’s called “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberly” — a title guaranteed to make Austen fans gasp with trepidation.

The action takes place “downstairs,” led by the motherly but tough head housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds. Will she manage to keep Mr. Wickham (who of course she has known since he was a child) in line and avoid any flare-ups with archenemy Fitzwilliam Darcy?

Find out in the Tina Packer Theater at Shakespeare & Co. on Dec. 16 and 17 at 7 p.m., Dec. 18 at 2 and 7 p.m. and Dec. 19 at 2 p.m. Get details and order tickets at www.shakespeare.org.

Latest News

Classifieds - December 4, 2025

Help Wanted

CARE GIVER NEEDED: Part Time. Sharon. 407-620-7777.

SNOW PLOWER NEEDED: Sharon Mountain. 407-620-7777.

Keep ReadingShow less
Legal Notices - December 4, 2025

LEGAL NOTICE

TOWN OF CANAAN/FALLS VILLAGE

Keep ReadingShow less
‘Les Flashs d’Anne’: friendship, fire and photographs
‘Les Flashs d’Anne’: friendship, fire and photographs
‘Les Flashs d’Anne’: friendship, fire and photographs

Anne Day is a photographer who lives in Salisbury. In November 2025, a small book titled “Les Flashs d’Anne: Friendship Among the Ashes with Hervé Guibert,” written by Day and edited by Jordan Weitzman, was published by Magic Hour Press.

The book features photographs salvaged from the fire that destroyed her home in 2013. A chronicle of loss, this collection of stories and charred images quietly reveals the story of her close friendship with Hervé Guibert (1955-1991), the French journalist, writer and photographer, and the adventures they shared on assignments for French daily newspaper Le Monde. The book’s title refers to an epoymous article Guibert wrote about Day.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nurit Koppel brings one-woman show to Stissing Center
Writer and performer Nurit Koppel
Provided

In 1983, writer and performer Nurit Koppel met comedian Richard Lewis in a bodega on Eighth Avenue in New York City, and they became instant best friends. The story of their extraordinary bond, the love affair that blossomed from it, and the winding roads their lives took are the basis of “Apologies Necessary,” the deeply personal and sharply funny one-woman show that Koppel will perform in an intimate staged reading at Stissing Center for Arts and Culture in Pine Plains on Dec. 14.

The show humorously reflects on friendship, fame and forgiveness, and recalls a memorable encounter with Lewis’ best friend — yes, that Larry David ­— who pops up to offer his signature commentary on everything from babies on planes to cookie brands and sports obsessions.

Keep ReadingShow less