Chocolate with the Brontës

Keighley News talks about a very sweet event taken place in Haworth this weekend (as we informed previously):

People will be able to sample fairtrade chocolate at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and Brontë Weaving Shed, in Haworth, later this month.
The chocolate tasting on Saturday, February 28, is part of Haworth’s Fairtrade Fortnight celebrations. There will be a quiz about fairtrade and Haworth, with entry forms available for collection at the Tourist Information Centre, in Main Street. The winner will receive a Fairtrade goods hamper, donated by the Oakworth Co-op store.
Also, cafés in Haworth will be serving refreshments made from ethically purchased ingredients.
And the day will culminate with a Fairtrade “Chuffin Fair” at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway’s Oxenhope engine shed, in Mill Lane. The 6.30pm fair will be attended by Bruce Crowther, who was responsible for launching the nationwide movement of Fairtrade towns.
Rita Verity, of Haworth Fairtrade group, said there were only a limited number of places available for the fair. Contact her on 01535 647776.

The Haywood County News announces the next season of the Haywood Arts Regional Theater season (Waynesville, North Carolina):

The old friend is Haywood Arts Regional Theater, the county's thriving community theater organization. And the party is HART's 25th anniversary season.
What a season it will be, with seven big shows hitting the boards beginning with the award-winning comedy “The Drawer Boy” in April and winding down with Shakespeare's classic “Hamlet” in November, funded by a grant from the N.C. Arts Council.
The playbill includes “Honk!,” a musical based on “The Ugly Duckling”; “The Immigrant,” a tale of two Eastern European Jews who immigrate in 1909 to a small Texas town; the wildly popular Mel Brooks musical “The Producers”; and “Jane Eyre: The Musical.” (Bill Studenc)

The auditions are scheduled for next August:

"Jane Eyre: The Musical"
Directed by Art O'Neil with Music Direction by Melodie Galloway
August 9 & 10 at 6:30 pm
Multiple Roles for Men and Women of Various Ages and Young Girls
This is a dramatic musical that requires singing but does not have choreography.

Teen Tix reviews the ongoing Seattle production of this musical:

Every song was beautifully accompanied by Paul Linnes and his five piece band. They really made the music come to life magnificently, whether it is sombre or upbeat. Another impressive aspect of the show was the amazing use of space accomplished by Carl Bronsdon. There were no major set changes, yet it was always clearly defined were each person was. Instead of hiding one bed onstage and having people shuffling around it, or having them pushed on stage, they were all expertly hidden.
The cast was full of wonderful talent, though some needed to be slightly tweaked to perform at their fullest capacity. The leads Danielle Barnum as Jane Eyre and James Padilla as Edward Rochester were both extremely talented singers and had compelling stage chemistry. The only faults were that Danielle’s monologues seemed a tad rushed, and James seemed to lack a focal point, making it hard for the audience to connect.
The audience was full of laughter whenever the housekeeper, played by Balayn Sharlples, surrendered her cheerful renditions that kept the performance upbeat. Her performance was the perfect contrast to the more sombre side of the musical. Another shining member of the cast was the competitive lover Ms. Ingram, played by Jenny Shotwell. Her zooming low and high notes rendered Ingram a perfect rendition of a painted peacock.
The young orphan girls both seem to be budding stars. It was amazing to see such an astounding voice on such a young girl as Olivia Spokiny, whose character Helen dies. Though she did seem to be a bit lively for her death scene, the rest of the time her acting was well performed and accomplished. Also, young Keaton performs her role wonderfully drawing the audience into the story.
The whole cast worked well as a team and played off each other marvellously. The interesting use of the whole cast was well accomplished by the ensemble. They were all accomplished in acting and in voice. Their timing never missed a beat. The singing and most of the performance was consistent and well performed. Though the transitions needed to be more built up or sharper in their execution. Every time there was a change of events it brought you out of the story. Instead of feeling “How could this happen”, it tended to turn into a “Wait, what just happened?” feel. Similarly, other parts of the performance seemed to be less true to the severe nature of the situation intended by the original author.
Overall the theatre was lovely and made you feel very much at home. With a lot of community help in the lobby it had a very comfortable feel. The show is defiantly worth seeing because of its life lessons and the considerable talent in the cast. Though it needed some slight changes over all, Jane Eyre was well performed and made for a truly enjoyable night out. (Pete R.)

What's On Stage reviews the current performances of Charles Ludlum's The Mystery of Irma Vep in the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh:

Set in a perpetually creaking country house, complete with Wuthering Heights moor (and compulsory fog), newly weds Lord Edgar and Lady Enid fall prey to the tribulations of any good gothic romance. (Rebecca Pottinger)

Michael Fassbender's possible Heathcliff role in the Wuthering Heights film projected (now apparently directed by Peter Webber) is mentioned in The Times:

In recent months he has been mentioned as Heathcliffe (sic) in a new film of Wuthering Heights and in the Dennis Waterman role, opposite Ray Winstone, in a movie version of The Sweeney. (Ed Potton)

The Telegraph lists several British holiday accommodations:

Yorkshire Cottages has about 260 properties in the Dales, York and on the coast. Higher Scholes Cottage, near Haworth and Brontë Country, sleeps four and costs £530 for a week in May. (Nick Trend)

A book a day, or the year of reading dangerously mentions a forgotten biography of the Brontës, Flora Masson's The Brontës (1912):

This is a biography of the Bronte family. It's only 92 pages long so leaves you wanting to know more about some of the incidents mentioned, but overall it is a very good introduction. The story of the Brontes is so well known of course that you will find yourself recognising each of the scenes as they take place.
The book itself is an old one, published in 1914. It's funny that the author thinks the Brontes will come to be underrated. She writes "Charlotte Bronte and her family have taken their place, once for all, among the literary enthusiasms of a bygone age". Of course she has been proved very wrong! (Fifecat)

Today, we have contrasting views on the blogosphere: What KT Reads doesn't like Wuthering Heights but Le Parole Dipinte posts a positive review (in Italian); K.C. from K.C . and Michelle Family Blog has read Jane Eyre but he seems to miss entirely the point. You can compare his views with Thursday Night Cafe's who has a very different perspective.

Finally, "No One, I Think, Is In My Tree" devotes a post to Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights and BeppeBlog has published an interesting introductory article about the Brontës (in Italian)

EDIT:
We have also an alert from the Athens Public Library (Athens, Ohio ):

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte The Great Books Club
Thursday, Feb 26 at 7:30 PM
Emily Bronte wrote but one novel in her brief life, and for many years it was thought to be inferior to her sister Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. However, though both works by these Bronte women are now considered classic works of English Literature, many critics today believe that Emily's Wuthering Heights is the superior work, because of its display of original compositional approaches with interlaced plotting, and its highly engrossed depictions of disturbed psychologies and psychologically fractured relationships. What is more, Emily creates something new from old cloth, by complicating traditional Gothic devices of the supernatural and moods of dread to give them deeper metaphorical and metaphysical meanings linked to family psychodrama. It is a tale of tortured love, social incongruity, sibling rivalry taken to pathological levels of intergenerational vengeance, divided souls, passionate asexual love, a Pandora's Box of woeful inter-class impermeability, madness born of compounded tragedy, and compassionate servants swept up into the fevered agonies of their pitiable yet heroic and anti-heroic masters and mistresses. Yet overall, the story is about two intertwined issues: a mutual love of dual personalities that must not be requited, and the mysterious nature of a physically foreign yet psychically kindred foundling, who grows up to be the undoing of an entire family. In short, compassion becomes curse, when one generation's nurturing declines into another generation's ultimate rejection of the adopted child, a being at once too familiar and too strange for comfort, and with the power to destroy. Please join Dr. Joe Reese of Ohio University's Department of English Language and Literature for a lively lecture and discussion of this great Nineteenth Century British novel.

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