Fierce but controlled emotion

The Breeze reviews the performances of Jane Eyre at the JMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

The cast of Jane Eyre illuminated the stage with fierce but controlled emotion, perfectly suited to Polly Teale’s script. (...)
The adaptation is full of both traditional and unconventional characteristics, exhibited in the simple, Victorian set as well as in the somewhat unorthodox musical underscoring. Cellist Grisha Kramer appeared onstage with the actors during several scenes of the play.
The cast of JMU’s production was visibly strong, with five out of eight cast members playing two or more roles with ease. Notable was junior Julie Schroll’s bubbly French novice Adele. Junior Lash Dooley’s composed transition from a clergyman to a household pet, spurred the crowd to laugher as Rochester’s dog, Pilot.
Sophomore Ali Hoxie proved capable in the challenging role of Bertha, which required animated body language over dialogue. She remained engaging and dynamic despite her limited opportunities for verbal expression throughout the play.
Senior Lauren Meyer played the title role of Jane Eyre, and did her best to convey the complexities that Teale strove to demonstrate to the audience through her script. Senior Joel Adam Gerlach’s Rochester straddled a fine line between jovial and deeply troubled, a combination that was unsettling at times.
Straying from the original Brontë novel, Teal [sic] explores a complex connection between Bertha and Jane Eyre. Bertha plays the character that Jane cannot be: assertive, decisive and vengeful. Her role is so beautifully incorporated that you are never sure if she’s a real character, or just figment of Jane’s imagination.
Overall, the small, seemingly tight-knit cast pulled together to expose an interesting and thought-provoking adaptation of a popular novel that is often taken at facevalue. Polly Teale’s “Jane Eyre” is an example of the underlying stories that can unravel from the texts we think we know best, if we’d only dig a little deeper. (Lindsay Casale and Aaron Stewart)

Terry Heath after the insightful series of posts devoted to the Female Gothic in Wuthering Heights now talks about the portrayal of women in late 18th and 19th century novels. The chosen examples of course are Jane and Catherine:

During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women increasingly contributed to the development of the novel. Individual novelists uniquely define the power and potential of the female, but how does female sexuality differ in each text? Has society’s expectations shifted or changed? If so, how does this effect the heroine? (Read more)

El Blog de Artemisa Ediciones informs of an upcoming new Spanish edition of Wuthering Heights with the illustrations of Balthus:

Traducción de Roberto Bartual / La edición incluye 27 dibujos de Balthus.

En el mundo oscuro de la infancia de los protagonistas de la obra de Emily Brontë, sobre la que Balthus hizo una amplia serie de dibujos en 1933, está el origen de una gran parte de la obra madura del artista. Algunos de estos dibujos fueron publicados en 1935 en Minotaure, la revista de los surrealistas, a quienes fascinaba la obra de Balthus.

EDIT:
The book appears next December 2007. Source.

And...

The Battle Creek Enquirer publishes the cast of the recent performances of Jane Eyre: The Musical in the Adrian College, Michigan. BookClubClassics reviews the recent performances of Jane Eyre at the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis. Lo Scaffale talks about Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë in Italian.

Categories: Books, Illustrations, Jane Eyre, Theatre, Wuthering Heights