Angela Timberman, Nate Cheeseman and Kelsey Didion in "The Wickhams." /Rich Ryan
This year's delightful, Jane Austen-adjacent holiday comedy at Jungle Theater is a new play, not a reprise of last year's delightful, Jane Austen-adjacent holiday comedy. But there is overlap between the two plays, which share characters and situations, as well as director Christina Baldwin. If last year's actors have their way, there could be more cross-Austening.
The cast of this year's "The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley" recently had lunch with some of the folks from 2017's "Miss Bennet," and hatched a plan: pop-in visits.
"Adia Morris, who played Jane, was pregnant last year, and she brought her baby to the lunch – who was really in the show last year, too, since she was pregnant. Kids were running around and it was such a sense of community. I love that actors who aren't even in the show would come to hang out with actors who are, just because they miss each other," says Sarah Rasmussen, the Jungle's artistic director.
It's at that lunch that Morris, Christian Bardin and JuCoby Johnson, who were in "Bennet" but not "Wickhams," threatened to show up, anyway.
"They were saying they'd just walk through the show and I'm like, 'You know I can't pay you for that,' but they were all, 'No, no. We just want to walk through for fun.' And, Christina being Christina, loves it and is saying, 'Do it!'" recalls Rasmussen.
There's unlikely to be advance warning, so you'll just have to be there to see what happens. With or without interlopers, "Wickhams" runs through Dec. 30
