Guthrie's Jane Eyre reviewed

The Minneapolis Star Tribune carries a review of the performances of Alan Stanford's adaptation of Jane Eyre at the Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis: Guthrie plumbs inner depths in not-so-plain version of 'Jane Eyre'. Strong performances by the two leads draw the audience into the story of an abused orphan who finds love.

Pictures by Charles T. Erickson Source.

Ushers handed out long-stemmed roses to patrons at the end of Friday night's opening performance of "Jane Eyre" at the Guthrie Theater.
The aromatic flowers, plus free-flowing champagne and lively music, extended a feeling from the play into the lobby. It was as if we had been guests at a different kind of production -- a wedding.
Yet, as "Jane Eyre" began with faintly ominous rumblings and with Jane Senior (played with warmth by Margaret Daly) narrating the story of her bitter childhood as it was acted out by a group of young actors, I did not imagine that mirth would be one of the by-products of the evening.
For one thing, the staging, by John Miller-Stephany, seemed at first to be quite remote, with much of the action taking place at the back of the stage -- a physical distance from the audience that matched the temporal one of the 19th-century setting. It seemed like we might be in for a historical diorama writ large on the Wurtele Thrust.
For another, scenic and costume designer Patrick Clark has chosen a mostly gray palette for the production. The sense of oppression that lends, while thematically apt, suggested an adaptation of a dreary but necessary Chekhov play rather than Alan Stanford's streamlined adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel of throbbing hearts.
Yet as lead actors Stacia Rice, who depicted Jane as a young adult, and Sean Haberle, as her would-be love, Rochester, dug deeper into their characters, the production drew us in. In portraying a self-controlled and consistent Jane, Rice used gestures and articulation to subtly reveal how a once-abused girl can imagine the possibility of love as an adult. Haberle gave Rochester a gruff, quaking embodiment. We get a sense from his muscular portrayal that Rochester's domineering persona is a cover for his ills.
The play accomplishes two beautiful things simultaneously: transporting us into the lives of characters created more than a century ago and making their story, even with some weird elements, feel contemporary.
Part fairy tale, part Gothic romance, Brontë's narrative carries us through the experiences of the principled and plain Jane Eyre. A put-upon orphan, she is first oppressed by her abusive relations. She lands in a religious charity school where discipline is at the tip of a cane. She survives that experience.
Jane accepts a job as a governess at Rochester's estate. She falls for him and he for her, but he's a man of mystery and tormenting secrets (suggested at times by composer Andrew Cooke's melancholy and feedback-sounding score).
The Guthrie's "Jane Eyre" succeeds because the main characters' inner lives are so palpably and vividly depicted by Haberle and Rice, who have a strong chemistry.
Rice's Jane is a character of simplicity and grace. Jane often is compared to a bird and to a nun, and Rice gives her a fluttery grace.
There are also smaller but potent performances by Barbara Bryne as Mrs. Fairfax, on the domestic staff of the Rochester estate; Charity Jones as a haunting, bat-like figure from Rochester's past; Barbara Kingsley as the sneering and sibilant Lady Ingram; and Nathaniel Fuller as the cruel and hypocritical Mr. Brocklehurst. (Rohan Preston)

Pioneer Press also reviews positively this production: Guthrie's 'Jane Eyre' satisfies fans, wins new ones:

(...)Alan Stanford offers a scrupulously faithful adaptation for the stage. His script bookends the tale with a mature, matronly Jane (a knowing, pleasingly unsentimental Margaret Daly) looking back over the events of her life and periodically conversing with her younger selves.
From the first words out of her mouth, it's evident that young Jane (bright-eyed fifth-grader Lucy Lawton) was born too early to live in mid-19th century England. She's lippy and she's opinionated and - uh-oh - she reads.
It's inevitable that this orphan will tangle with her bad-willed, bourgeois relations and get cast off into the world and grow into young womanhood facing a harsh world where her principles and her heart will be tested by the mysterious, brooding Mr. Rochester.
Stacia Rice might not be the plain-looking, puny Jane that Bronte had in mind, but she's the very incarnation of how young female readers probably pictured her. Her barely disguised beauty rides on a steel-spined carriage whose outward strength is belied by a fluttering smile. Jane's life is no picnic, and Rice lets us see that struggle as well as the core of unapologetic self-pride and certainty that sees her through.
Wild haired, with a face that looks chiseled out of stone and eyes always ready to taunt or tease, Sean Haberle's Edward Rochester strikes an intriguing and propulsive balance. His Rochester is a volatile man whose Dr. Jekyll seems forever at war with his Mr. Hyde, and as likely to explode in anger as in delight. With Rice, their characters struggle and strive to forge a hard-won love that starts as a meeting of the minds and becomes a melding of souls.
And they're well supported at every turn. From Charity Jones' beautiful, bestial Bertha to Barbara Bryne's bemused and dutiful Mrs. Fairfax; Peter Christian Hansen's more-righteous-than-thou St. John Rivers to Nathaniel Fuller's Dickensian schoolmaster Brocklehurst; Peggy O'Connell's rough-hewn Grace Pool to Ron Menzel's tortured and fraternal Richard Mason, they make the characters of Bronte's world come to vivid life.
Clocking in at just under three hours, John Miller-Stephany's direction - set on Patrick Clark's plain, looming set of gray battlements and circular platforms - hits the right notes and finds the wry humor that's not immediately evident on the page.
His staging drags in the same places the novel does (most notably in the time between Jane's tearful departure from Thornfield and her reunification with Rochester), but Andrew Cooke's underscoring lifts the proceedings with a cinematic sweep.
His music foreshadows dark secrets, celebrates romance with reserve and helps complete the Guthrie's not-insignificant achievement of honoring a literary classic while giving it leave to breathe anew. (Dominic P. Papatola)

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Theatre