Pointe Players highlight love and laughs in ‘Sense and Sensibility’

GROSSE POINTE FARMS — A literary classic adapted for the stage will take audiences back to a more genteel era this month.

Grosse Pointe South High School’s Pointe Players are staging a theatrical version of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” at 7 p.m. Oct. 16-18 in the South auditorium.

Set in late 1700s England, Austen’s first published novel is a comedy of manners that follows the Dashwood sisters — Elinor and Marianne — as they pursue romance and learn to balance emotion with practicality. As South drama director and English teacher Dan DeMarco points out, the Regency era was one of politeness and propriety, during which genuine feelings were often kept in check and appearances were everything.

The play brings some of the novel’s understated humor to the fore.

“It’s not that we’re making fun of it,” DeMarco said. “We’re just having a lot of fun with it.”

Sophomore Ben Copus, 15, of Grosse Pointe Park, plays John Dashwood, the half-brother of Elinor and Marianne, as well as the smaller role of Thomas.

“He’s really like a lighthearted guy,” Copus said. “I kind of see myself in him.”

Unfortunately, John Dashwood is easily duped by his wife, Fanny. Fanny convinces her husband not to share his inheritance from his late father with his sisters, despite his father asking him to do so on his deathbed.

Playing Fanny is sophomore Skylar Boomhower, 15, of the Farms; she also plays a gossip and puppets in the show. Boomhower said Fanny is someone who has to have her way at all times.

“He’s really stupid and gullible, and I’m really mean and manipulative,” Boomhower said of the relationship between John and Fanny. “I’m the reason the (Dashwood) sisters have no money.”

Boomhower said the gossips “sometimes become furniture” and also serve as transportation for the actors, whether as horses or as carriages.

“It’s a very fun show with lots of moving pieces,” Boomhower said. “You’re not going to get bored.”

Senior Brady Barbour, 17, of Grosse Pointe Farms, plays Sir John Middleton, a distant relative of the Dashwoods who invites the sisters and their mother to stay at his cottage, where the show takes place.

“It seemed like a fun role, and that’s typically what draws me to characters,” said Barbour of his character, who is also “quite loud.”

Playing Fanny’s brothers, Edward and Robert Ferrars, is Leo Neds-Fox, 17, of Grosse Pointe Farms, a senior. He said he’s been acting since his freshman year and is excited to be doing this show because one of his favorite books is “Emma,” by Jane Austen.

“I love Jane Austen’s writing,” Neds-Fox said, noting that it “transcends her time period.”

“It’s mostly centered on how women move through a society where they’re dependent on men,” Neds-Fox continued.

He said Austen had an innate understanding of how people related to one another.

This show, while true to the book, makes the humor underlying the story more apparent.

“It’s like a comedic take on Jane Austen,” Neds-Fox said. “I think she was always a comedic author, but because she was writing in that period, there were constraints.”

It’s not a musical, but DeMarco said there’s music in the show. He said audiences should “expect the unexpected.”

“There’s some really fun romantic comedy in there,” DeMarco said.

Grosse Pointe South High School is located at 11 Grosse Pointe Blvd. in Grosse Pointe Farms. For more information, contact Dan DeMarco at DemarcD@gpschools.org.