McAndrews takes the Austen premise that a woman’s future depends upon her making an advantageous match and pushes it to the rear of the barouche while bringing forward the more universal themes of sisterly love and the importance of kindness and honor. But will he marry her? Societal rules, inheritance issues and helpful or harmful interference by family and friends all play a part in the matchmaking. Soon Marianne meets the handsome and dashing Willoughby, who wins her smile and steals her heart. Thanks to generous distant relatives, the women move to small Barton Cottage in Devonshire to make a new home and, perhaps someday, new lives as wives, the only option for women of their class to gain an income. Yet no official proposal ensues, so Elinor is left to wonder about her future. While still at the manor, Elinor meets her sister-in-law’s brother, Edward Ferrars, and it is clear to all (unhappily so to Fanny) that the two have found mutual respect and affection for each other. So the play begins with the Dashwoods simultaneously playing host to their half brother, John, and his wife, Fanny, and feeling like unwelcome and unwanted guests in their no longer home sweet home as they await word of a new place to live. Dashwood, must vacate the manor they call home after their father dies, leaving the great house to his male heir, a son by his first wife. The cast, speaking in fairly passable British accents, explains that the Dashwoods, consisting of Elinor, the eldest and wisest of three sisters Marianne, who wears her heart on her sleeve Margaret, the plucky youngest and their mother, Mrs. Since the character list is large and the troupe is small, quick changes of costume during this incipient narration bring forth the first chuckles of the evening. The actors zippily bounce from character to character to bring the audience up to speed. TAM’s “Sense and Sensibility” opens with the entire ensemble on stage introducing all the characters they will play - no matter how minor - and giving a bit of background to the story, its plot and setting. Much credit goes to McAndrews and her company’s freshly comedic approach to this classic coming-of-age tale featuring the Dashwood sisters and their romantic entanglements. The script is as entertaining today as the book was when it was first published in 1811. Theater at Monmouth’s fall production of “Sense and Sensibility,” written by Austen and skillfully adapted and directed by Dawn McAndrews, shatters that preconceived notion. There is a prejudice that the works of Jane Austen are best enjoyed by single women of a certain age who provide shelter to a surplus of cats.