Looking at the Brontës from different angles

Let's start with some visuals. Designgeek has posted several non-conventional pictures of Haworth. Don't expect to see anything Brontë-related, just a few pictures showing another side of the village. But they're lovely all the same.

Haworth is also Gabriel Byrne's Favourite View of Britain, according to The Times.

... he would probably settle in rural England, where he wanders with a rucksack as often as he can; he is just about to present a segment in a television series on Britain’s Favourite Views. He chose Haworth, where the Brontës lived, because Wuthering Heights is a great passion. “The power of the book is that death cannot separate the lovers,” he says, which sounds banal until he adds, with a lugubrious smile, that in Buñuel’s 1954 movie version, there is an intimation that Heathcliff comes back for Cathy’s body. “So death isn’t the end of sex after all.” (Lesley White)

For more info on Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión, we suggest you take a look at these old posts. It's been argued by many critics and Brontëites that this version, set in Mexico, is about the closest adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel. Not to the letter, but to the spirit.

Yesterday, as you know, was Daphne du Maurier's (unofficial) day. Aptly enough, today we find in Digne's livejournal a comparison between two literary musicals: Gordon and Caird's Jane Eyre and Levay and Kunze's Rebecca (premiered in Vienna, last year). As the novels have been compared, it is only fitting that the musicals should be too.

The music from either could be rearranged and probably work in the other show, but as they are now "Rebecca," although mellow when compared with Kunze and Levay's other shows, sounds really rocked-up next to "Jane Eyre." I was surprised that the only modern influences in "Jane Eyre" are the vocals the music itself has no pop sound despite the sort of Enya-ish influences.
But there are similar presences in places. "Farewell, Good Angel" from "Jane Eyre" and "Gott, warum?" (God, why?) from "Rebecca" really do sound quite similar. And they are sung by Rochester and Maxim respectively, the characters who are the most similar between the two works. And I believes James Barbour and Uwe Kröger have played a lot of the same rolls in the past (the Beast in "Beauty and the Beast" and Javert from "Les Mis" right?).
Some of the comic numbers also have similar style. And both works use sort of ghostly voices in places.

We'd love to hear more on this if anyone is familiar with both musicals as well.

The Times-Picayune reviews My Mother the Cheerleader by Robert Sharenow.

But to Louise, segregation is what she's grown up with, and she doesn't miss the time off from school. Her days are spent cleaning up after the longtime boarder of Rooms on Desire, Mr. Landroux, who requires bed-pan duty and a bit of collusion in his fantasy world. She reads books over and over -- especially her favorite novel, "Jane Eyre," and perfects her domestic espionage techniques, spying on her mother, the men who come to stay -- and the ones who come to visit -- as well as housekeeper Charlotte Dupree. (Susan Larson)

Actually, on the book's webpage, we find an extract from chapter 2 which says,

I noticed she was asleep around four-thirty when I came downstairs via the kitchen to read Jane Eyre in the Music Hall. I'd already read the book twice. Jane was my favorite literary heroine, probably because I associated my plight with hers—a poor but incredibly bright and sensitive girl who was forced to live in an old house with a crazy woman.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights