The Watsons

This thrilling new play from Laura Wade, the winner of this year’s Olivier Award for Best New Comedy (Home I’m Darling), is making its London premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory after a sell-out season at the Chichester Festival Theatre last year.

What happens when the writer loses the plot?

Emma Watson is nineteen and new in town. She’s been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast. If not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse: an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife.

Luckily there are plenty of potential suitors to dance with, from flirtatious Tom Musgrave to castle-owning Lord Osborne, who’s as awkward as he is rich.

So far so familiar. But there’s a problem: Jane Austen didn’t finish the story. Who will write Emma’s happy ending now?

Based on her incomplete novel, this sparklingly witty play looks under the bonnet of Jane Austen and asks: what can characters do when their author abandons them?

Laura Wade’s play Home I’m Darling (Theatr Clwyd, National Theatre, West End & UK tour) won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy. Her hit play Posh transferred to the West End from the Royal Court, and then onto the big screen as The Riot Club. Recent work includes the adaptation of Tipping the Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith and Edinburgh).

It is based on the Chichester Festival Theatre production which had its world premiere at the Minerva Theatre on 3 November 2018.