Watching the new Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's "Persuasion," with Dakota Johnson in the lead role of Anne, is like being trapped in a theatre with locked doors when a community production starts to go terribly wrong.
I've been in the audience when the set of "The Importance of Being Earnest" fell down. I've been on stage when someone skipped dozens of pages in "The Curious Savage" and the story stopped making sense. I've been backstage when a ballerina was hit in the face by a coat hanger that plummeted with the falling snow of "The Nutcracker" (the plastic snow was expensive and so they swept it up and reused it every night, you see).
