Jane Austen’s Love & Freindship [sic]

Aug 12 2026 | By Rebecca Mahar More

★★★☆☆ Droll

PBH’s Free Fringe @ CC Blooms: Sat 8 – Fri 14 Aug 2026
Review by Rebecca Mahar

Edinburgh Rep Company and Erstwhile Media take on Jane Austen with an adaptation of the legendary novelist’s Love and Freindship [sic], a satirical parody written by Austen at the age of fourteen.

Adapted and directed by Oliver Giggins, Love and Freindship [sic] opens with young ladies Marianne and Isabel arriving to visit the elderly (well, maybe: she’s 55, but victim of a long grey wig) Laura, Marianne’s maternal figure, regaling her with the tale of how they barged their way into the house of an old man they each claimed for their grandfather.

Jane Austen’s Love and Freindship [sic]Edinburgh Rep CompanyErstwhile Media
PBH’s Free Fringe @ CC Blooms
EdFringe 2026
Review

Jane Austen’s Love and Freindship [sic]. Pic: Erstwhile

For all Marianne knows, having no idea who her father was, he could have been – and so she prevails upon Laura to tell her the who her father is, and the stories of the wild youth that must have led up to Marianne’s birth.

Throwing off her wig, Laura obliges, and launches into the rendition of her completely absurd misadventures, wherein Jane Austen pokes fun at such trivialities as arranged marriage, love at first sight, preternatural knowledge of long-lost relatives, fainting spells, and one’s Mama and Papa starving to death.

manic energy

The script and its staging are a bit rough and ready, not quite landing with Erstwhile’s usual flair, but there are still plenty of laughs to be had. The multi-roling cast move from scene to scene with manic energy, a necessity of filling out the many characters of Austen’s novella.

They are all at their best when portraying young Laura (Natalie Beller), her friend Sophia (Beth Eltringham), and their respective husbands, Edward (Kyle Paton) and Augustus (Pedro Branco), with Kathryn Harper, who plays Marianne in the framing story, coming into her own in the past as Janetta, daughter of Sophia’s uncle McDonald.

A scene from Jane Austen’s Love and Freindship [sic]. Pic: Erstwhile.

While the script could use tightening in some areas and expanding in others, allowing the audience a bit more time to follow and appreciate the whirlwind story, it is packed with snappy humour from both Austen and Giggins, its jokes and witticisms given life with excellent timing and (when appropriate) deadpan delivery by the cast.

Certain of the script’s oddities are down to Austen— for instance, the decision to have Janetta and Captain M’Kenrie elope to Gretna Green when they’re already in Scotland beyond the reach of Hardwicke’s Marriage Act. Whether or not this is another barb by Austen, it was a missed opportunity for yet another gag in a script already riddled with excellent ones.

Jane Austen’s Love and Freindship [sic] is an ambitious adaptive project, one of six productions by Edinburgh Rep this Fringe, and certainly worth a jaunt down to CC Blooms for an hour of literary hijinks.

Running time: One hour (no interval).
BH’s Free Fringe @ CC Blooms (LAB), 23-24 Greenside Place EH1 3AA (Venue 171).
Saturday 8 – Friday 14 August 2026.
Daily: 6.15pm.
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.com.
Tickets direct from venue: Book here.

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Linktree: @edinburghrepco.