Jane Eyre travels to Pittsburgh and Zimbabwe

Jane Eyre The Musical in Pittsburgh gets reviewed.

Like many of the so-called children's classics ("Gulliver's Travels," anything by Dickens), Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" is potent stuff, with adult moral issues and dark sexual conflicts. It's also a rich ugly duckling fantasy about an orphan girl with no apparent talent, beauty, money or social standing (as she's told) who wins the thrilling love of a mysterious hero.

Ahem... we don't think Jane Eyre can be classified as "children's classic".

"Crabbed and monochromatic," I wrote about Toronto. Not so at the Playhouse, where director Penelope Miller Lindblom's cast of 25 fills Dick Block's unit set with movement and energy. Choreographer Ron Tassone wheels all these around the small Rauh Theater stage with ease, but it all starts with Lind-blom, who has shown before her flare for composing expressive stage pictures to tell a story.
"Jane Eyre" follows the heroine (played as a spunky girl by Gina Tomkowich) from an awful Dickensian orphanage to the aptly named Thornfield Hall. Grown up and played by Caroline Nicolian, Jane becomes governess to Adele (also played by Tomkowich, very sunny), the love child of the tormented Edward Rochester, played
with strong presence by Kalen Hall.

Isn't the reviewer obsessed with Dickens?

Gordon's score isn't distinctive to me, but it has some pretty or thrilling moments. Mainly, there's a lot of it, with the 2 1/2-hour show practically through-composed, its dialogue often underscored by David Pressau's small orchestra.
The program lists 44 songs, some just snippets, compared to 33 on Broadway, so I'm sure there is a history of development and tweaking of this musical which never achieved much success. It does at the Playhouse. (Christopher Rawson)

We do think the score is highly distinctive but then again things would be different if Dickens had written it, eh? :P

Click either on the link of the review or our old post to find out about the venue details. (Picture credits: (Caroline Nicolian, left, is Jane Eyre and Kalen J. Hall is Edward Rochester in Point Park University's Conservatory of Performing Arts production of "Jane Eyre.", source)

And now an unexpected mention of Jane Eyre today.

So what is SADC hoping for here? That the world, and Zimbabweans in particular, forgets that there is a little black spot on the SADC map? What will they do? Hide Zimbabwe in a secret closet, much like Rochester’s mad wife was kept hidden in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre?

Okay... Sometimes we get a feeling that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights must appear in some journalism manual under the section "what to use to look cultured and fill space at the same time".

Categories: Theatre, Music, Jane_Eyre