Dragon Review: Emma – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 27 Sep, 2025
Updated on: 1 Oct, 2025

Sparring snobs: Emma (India Shaw-Smith) and Mrs Elton (Rose Quentin) at the Box Hill picnic. All images Simon Annand

By Barbara Ford

This week brings “Emma” from the Theatre Royal Bath to Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre. A lively, beautifully staged and dressed version, with the correct period setting, it’s bound to please Regency Romance fans, even if the departures from the novel annoy some Jane Austen fans.

It’s an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, the one with “a heroine whom no one but myself [Austen] will much like”. Emma is an appalling self-satisfied snob, the young, rich and beautiful acknowledged social leader of her Surrey community, who relieves boredom by meddling in her neighbours’ affairs.

Pairing off at the Ball: Mr Elliot ( Oscar Battenham); Frank Churchill ( Peter Losasso); Jane Fairfax ( Jade Kennedy);Emma (India Shaw-Smith)

The play, like the novel, opens with Emma at a loose end following the marriage of her governess, and deciding to take up naïve and somewhat dim young Harriet as her protegée.

Emma (India Shaw-Smith) reassuring her anxious father, Mr Woodhouse (William Chubb)

Emma will elevate Harriet’s social status by detaching her from her budding romance with a local farmer and pairing her off with Mr Elton, the local vicar. The results of this are hilarious but also painful.

She rides roughshod over Harriet’s feelings and indeed over those of Mr Elton, a social climber himself, who quickly escapes by marrying someone else.

She then turns her attention to Frank Churchill, an attractive and eligible bachelor with some mystery in his behaviour, and to Jane Fairfax, a beautiful but poor neighbour, all the time brushing off warnings from her neighbour Mr Knightley.

The acting is excellent, hampered only by the script. India Shaw-Smith is a magisterial Emma, with the looks and stage presence to dominate the others convincingly and the comic timing to give point to her snappy responses to all criticism.

Emma’s put-upon protegée Harriet Smith (Maiya Louise Thapar) with Emma (India Shaw-Smith)

Unfortunately the script omits the character development Jane Austen provides, the moment of horrified self-knowledge and shame at the damage she has done, which would enable us to like the character more.

Maiya Louise Thapar, in her first professional role, is excellent as the humble and put-upon Harriet, the social inferior dazzled by Emma. She at least does learn something through her experience, talking somewhat anachronistically of her “autonomy” as she walks off in the end with her faithful farmer.

Ed Sayer is a dashing and sympathetic Mr Knightley. His tenderness towards Harriet, when no one will dance with her at the ball, is moving, juxtaposed with his anger at Emma in the Box Hill picnic scene. That righteous anger makes his confession of his feelings towards Emma all the more warming.

Emma (India Shaw-Smith) receives unwelcome advice from sensible but eligible Mr Knightley (Ed Sayer)

They are ably supported by the rest of the cast: Oscar Batterham as the ridiculous Mr Elton, hilariously insulted to discover Emma’s plans for him; Rose Quentin making the most of playing the odious Mrs Elton, out-snobbing Emma.

Jade Kennedy is the sweet and good Jane Fairfax; Peter Losasso slippery and charming as Frank Churchill; and Daniel Rainford doing what he can as the noble farmer. And saving the best till last, William Chubb as the valetudinarian Mr Woodhouse, stealing scenes – though admittedly he has the good lines – with superb comic timing.

Inevitably, in making the novel into a two-and-a-half hour play, a good chunk of the novel has been omitted – the Miss Bates episodes, for example. Also probably inevitable, the language has been updated and jars occasionally. But, there’s still a lot to enjoy in this professional and workmanlike production.