A work in progress

A review of the current Seattle performances of Jane Eyre. The Musical can be read today in The Seattle Times:

Paul Linnes heads a vigorous five-piece band that's always in sync with a strong cast of singers. Carl Bronsdon's stark deep-blue set, which suggests both a crypt and a chapel, seems to have settled Sleeping Beauty's castle in an enchanted but tangled forest.
Best of all, there's chemistry in the casting of the two leads. In the title role, playing a much-abused orphan who becomes a governess, Danielle Barnum is reserved yet always compelling. The attraction between Jane and her employer, Edward Rochester (James Padilla), is established at their first meeting, and it only grows as they find themselves defying convention and contemplating marriage.
Keaton Whittaker plays the young Jane, who frequently shares the stage with Barnum. What could have been a gimmick becomes a legitimate way of suggesting the power of memory; director Gregory Magyar uses it to create the play's most touching moments. Standouts in the comic-relief department are Walayn Sharples as the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax; and Jenny Shotwell as Jane's romantic rival, Blanche Ingram.
Still, there's only so much the actors can do with a collection of songs that, especially during the second half, become plot-heavy and overwritten. "Forgiveness," sung by Jane's doomed childhood friend, Helen, is handled with conviction by Olivia Spokoiny (Barnum's reprise of it is equally affecting), and Shotwell does yank some laughs out of the rowdy "The Finer Things."
The composer, Paul Gordon, who more recently created a musical based on Jane Austen's "Emma," once claimed he's never stopped rewriting "Jane Eyre." Consider this a work in progress. (John Hartl)

The Harvard Crimson has an article about John Mullan's Anonymity:

Mullan begins his book by seeking patterns to explain the psychology behind various author’s motives for publishing without attribution. His case studies read like a Who’s Who of English literature—from anonymous authors like Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Walter Scott to those like Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) and the Brontë sisters, who used psudonyms. Mullan profiled authors who concealed their identities for social propriety, literary promotion, or mere mischief. (Manning Ding)

The Oregonian reviews the debut novel of Miriam Gershow, The Local News:

"The Local News" has a teen protagonist, but it's not young adult literature. The narrator barely relates to other teens, and not just in the normal socially awkward ways of adolescence. She is one who "had always enjoyed summers ... teaching [herself] the tenets of Buddhism, learning conversational Italian, reading the Bronte sisters." She takes high school classes with dissertation-style names, recites obscure facts involving geographical straits or former presidents, quotes chaos theory and cleans like a housewife to manage her anxious restlessness. (Monica Drake)

The exhibit The Book as Art. Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College is discussed in The Daily News Tribute. Jane Eyre is quoted as a 'traditional book':

Unlike traditional books from "Jane Eyre" to "The Female Eunuch" where the contents almost always matters more than packaging, the artful books in this show ask viewers to equally regard form and content. (Chris Bergeron)

The Guardian, which recently compiled a list of 1000 novels everyone must read, now publishes some of its readers' suggestions on love stories:

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes (1982)
Although it is very short and a trifle unsettling, this novel is a wonderful evocation of the extremes of love, encompassing adoration, indifference, desperation and infatuation in a similar way to Wuthering Heights, but with a 20th-century twist. It all ends in a shocking and brutal manner.
Ian Gray, Beverley, East Yorkshire

Completely Insane posts about her love for Jane Eyre, mental_floss selects a list of literary heroines including Jane Eyre, Lo que me gusta en cine talks about Jane Eyre 1944 in Spanish (where it was premiered as Alma Rebelde). Finally, a couple of curious youtube videos, with Amharic translations of poems by Charlotte Brontë (Parting, Passion).

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music,Poetry, References, Theatre, Translations