A couple of newspapers cover the performances of After Mrs. Rochester in Braddock that we presented on a previous post.An auditorium stalled in mid-renovation serves as both setting and theme for Quantum Theatre's latest venture. (...)
Like writer Jean Rhys, the central character in "After Mrs. Rochester," the auditorium, the library to which it is attached and even the community of Braddock that surrounds it, have all endured despite hardships and reversals of fortune that should have ended in destruction."I thought it was right (for the play) because it reflects a quality she had," says Karla Boos, Quantum artistic director. "Like her, it's hanging in there."
"After Mrs. Rochester" moves backward and forward in time as it weaves scenes from the life of 20th-century writer Rhys with flashes to both scenes and characters from Charlotte Bronte's Victorian novel "Jane Eyre" and Rhys' childhood on the Caribbean island of Dominica.
Through flashbacks and present-moment interactions, it's a journey through the tortured past and present of the mentally fragile Rhys as she wrestles with what will ultimately become her 1966 novel "Wide Sargasso Sea."
"It's a series of vignettes," director Rodger Henderson says. "Rhys' memories of her past life are sometimes linear and sometimes out of sequence."
The play is set in England in 1957. But the audience also is inside Rhys' imagination as she works on what can best be described as a prequel or backstory to "Jane Eyre."
Bronte's characters -- Edward Rochester and his wife, Bertha, a madwoman confined in the attic of his ancestral home, as well as Grace Poole, the woman charged with taking care of the mad Mrs. Rochester -- all come to life in scenes that draw parallels between Rhys' past and present reality and that of Bertha's.
"It's the story of her, as well as the characters she wrote about," says Boos who plays Rhys. "It's about an artist trying to make a piece of work from her point of view who had difficulty trying to be an artist and a mother at the same time. She really moves me."
Rhys' struggle as a writer and a person also touched Henderson.
"What attracted me was (Rhys') survival. This isn't fiction, this is a real person's life," he says. "Her life is really decadent. She kept looking for her Launcelot. She became an artist's model, a prostitute. But in her own mind it wasn't for the money. She was still looking for her Rochester. ... Men would leave her because she was so (emotionally) needy, but continue to send her money."
By age 14 Rhys had read "Jane Eyre" five times. The novel and its characters haunted her, Henderson says. He likens the character of Bertha to that of a monkey on her back that she carried with her. In the play, the mad Mrs. Rochester follows Jean through her life, often interacting with the characters of young Jean and the adult Jean.
"You always carry that person who tells you the truth about your life," Henderson says. "By the end of the play, Jean accepts her."
"It was an epic life," Johnson says of Rhys. "The play is all about the act of bravery it takes to write down your life and to live your own life and make a story out of it."In the picture, Miki Johnson, right, joins Robin Walsh, left, and Karla Boos. (Source)Making a life into a story condenses, highlights and even skews perception. "The play doesn't move forward like a train," Johnson says. "It's like explosions. How your brain thinks is how this play works."
"After Mrs Rochester" is being staged in the Music Hall of the historic Braddock Carnegie Library and also features Robin Walsh as Bertha Mason (the "madwoman" from "Jane Eyre"), with Mary Rawson, Hugo Armstrong, Linda Haston, Mark Staley and Dana Hardy. The director is Rodger Henderson, who also directed Quantum's recent "The Crucible" and "Dark of the Moon."
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