Dating apps, booze and clubbing – Jane Austen’s Emma comes into the 21st Century

You’re in a sweaty nightclub in Essex. You’re hammered. And your pushy best friend is trying to sort out your love life. It’s Jane Austen’s Emma, but not as you know it.

For the uninitiated, the 1815 novel follows the charmed life of our protagonist in Regency England as she busies herself interfering in her friends’ relationships (or matchmaking, depending on your point of view).

In Ava Pickett’s fresh adaptation, being staged at London’s Rose Theatre, Emma Woodhouse still has all the trademark traits of our beloved original heroine – she’s clever, quick-witted, meddling, haughty and occasionally cruel.

But instead of navigating society balls and dowries, Pickett’s modern Emma is poking her nose into her friends’ online dating profiles, having returned home after failing her exams at Oxford University.

Emma is the first from her family to go to university and isn’t about to come clean to her proud working class dad about why she’s suddenly back.

Pickett herself, who hails from Clacton in Essex, was also one of the first in her family to go to university.

Although she finished her degree, she says she “felt like a failure” and became “defensive” afterwards when she went back home and couldn’t find work (having trained as an actor). That “manifested as being quite contrary and overconfident in how everyone else should be living… and how I needed to be”, she says. “And so I think a lot of that is at play with Emma.”

At 31, Pickett is making a name for herself as one of the UK’s most prolific and talented young writers. She’s penned scripts for TV dramas including Sky’s Brassic and the BBC’s Ten Pound Poms, had her debut play 1536 staged at London’s Almeida theatre, and is writing a film about Joan of Arc with Baz Luhrmann, no less.

She tells me that though she hadn’t read Emma before being approached by the Rose’s Christopher Haydon, who is directing the play, she was hooked once she started it.

“I really identified with that feeling of [being] 21. She’s so young, but is on the cusp of adulthood. She believes she knows everything about everyone else’s life and what they need to do in order to get to happiness. She reminded me so much of me at that age.”

Austen is definitely having a moment (not that she’s ever really been away). This year marks the 250th anniversary of her birth, and in recent years we’ve enjoyed BBC TV series Miss Austen, a film adaptation of Emma starring Anya Taylor Joy, and the West End’s Clueless musical (based on the cult 90s teen film adaptation of Emma, which Pickett calls a “masterpiece”).

There’s also a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Emma Corrin coming to Netflix.

Pickett says she wanted to do a contemporary adaptation of Emma, rather than a period version, after “talking to a lot of my friends about it, how they felt about dating, and I felt like I was beginning to recognise Emmas in my life”.

This Emma (played by Amelia Kenworthy) and the other main players, including love interest George Knightley (Kit Young), are more likely to spend their spare time in the pub or local nightclub than sipping tea from the finest china or practising the piano.

And there’s always a spare half hour here or there to obsess over your online dating profile and potential matches (or should we say suitors).

“It’s so brutal because I think the apps can get really addictive, so that your validation comes from how many likes you have, how many matches you get… It becomes a kind of game… so a lot of your self-worth is coming from a number on your screen,” Pickett says.

“This idea of ghosting someone can be really, really cruel,” she adds.

“In my experience, a lot of young men have found the apps toxic too… They are perpetuating a value system that doesn’t value human complexity or awkwardness.”

Young, who has starred in TV shows such as Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, adds: “This production really showcases that technology is just another lens of confusion, because someone can… get it wrong. We have much more facility for communication, but that doesn’t mean that we communicate any better and… that’s actually the chaos of it all.”

His character is a steady presence in Emma’s life and they are a more similar age than in the book, where George is about 17 years older.

Pickett explains: “I wasn’t really interested in her being an ingénue.”

Young adds: “George is very astute, very smart. He doesn’t hate where he’s from, and he’s quite comfortable there.

“The one person that grinds his gears is Emma. You can absolutely love someone and hate someone at the same time.”

Kenworthy, who plays the lead, is sympathetic to her character.

“Every choice she makes is because she’s just trying to help people, and it’s messy and it’s complicated. But her heart’s in the right place. She probably just needs to see a therapist!”

Emma’s long-suffering best friend Harriet (Sofia Oxenham) has remained in their home town while Emma has been away studying, and has a more rounded and significant role in Pickett’s version than in the novel.

“I really love writing female friendships because I think they are wonderful but brutal and difficult. No-one teaches you at school that it’s work to stay friends for a long time,” Pickett says.

One of Austen’s most famous quotes comes courtesy of Emma, who says to Harriet: “You must be the best judge of your own happiness” (before ironically talking her into turning down a proposal from farmer Robert Martin due to her own snobbery).

“I really wanted to dig into that a lot. It’s something Emma has to learn,” Pickett says.

The writer is hoping the universal appeal of Austen will translate to audiences more than 200 years after Emma was first published.

“The human condition is, in lots of ways, still the same. Jealousy is jealousy. Love is love.”

Emma is on at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, London, from 17 September until 11 October 2025.