Breaking news: Heathcliff and Mr Rochester are not real

Reviews of recent productions of Jane Eyre on stage keep trickling in. Independent Weekly reviews the Durham production:

Regrettably, no endorsement can follow last Saturday night's viewing of Jane Eyre. This production is likely to be lambasted by some for basically not being Nicholas Nickleby (currently playing at PlayMakers Rep), even though both shows suffer at least one common deficit—a bench of actors that's too thin for the work they're attempting to present. We first see it here when J Evarts must transform in a manner of seconds from Bessie, the serving woman who tolerates Jane as an unwanted child in the Reed household, to Maria Temple, the Lowood School superintendent who befriends the title character. Most perplexing, yeoman Dan Sipp is forced to whip repeatedly between three different figures—the priest, a solicitor and the supporting character, Mason—during the play's marriage scene. As with Playmakers' Nickleby, too few actors playing too many characters also results in what I'll term actor bleed-through at points and unconvincing differentiations in others—thin characterizations, far too often.
At first, it seems Melissa Lozoff's new adaptation labors hard to touch the bases of Charlotte Brontë's 19th-century novel—though that sense is likely exacerbated by the breathless pace director Tom Marriott too often employs. True, this show never drags. It also never fully develops a number of dramatic moments from the novel.
These are accompanied by sequences whose dramatic tenor is markedly changed from the original. Emma Nadeau's unassuming take on the lead character is appropriate—until, that is, the scene where her confrontation with Mrs. Reed gives her, in Brontë's words, "the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph." In this production, Marriott does Nadeau no favors when they make a tantrum of this episode, delivering it in an almost comically high-pitched voice—one that effectively infantilizes Eyre instead of turning her nearly into "an opponent of adult age." Later, Jay O'Berski makes an effective foil as Rochester, but his character's emotions remain too internal at the end of the night.
Slapdash staging all but erases the death of Jane's childhood confidant, Helen Burns (given a minimal turn by Carolyn McDaniel), rendering her final moment an unseemly disappearing act in which Eyre is viewed with her head in the lap of Burns in one instant and then in the lap of Miss Temple after a blackout. Such day-for-night reinterpretations make us wonder if anyone in this show besides the adaptor has ever actually read Brontë's work.
The characters who speak in novels tend to cross between epic mode—when a story's narrator addresses the reader directly—and dramatic mode, in which the characters talk to one another, like dialogue in a play. When a narrator is a central character, like Jane Eyre, she does both, interacting with other characters before interacting with us. At least, that's how it's supposed to go. Here, Nadeau and others awkwardly crash through such divisions between world of story and world of audience, in a show whose speed doesn't always permit scenes to close.
The paint-daubed platforms of Derrick Ivey's threadbare set only reinforce the impression of a production that appears to have been mounted without sufficient resources, cast—and, in some cases, knowledge of the original text. (Byron Woods)

As does the Raleigh News & Observer:

Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" has been adapted for the stage regularly since it first appeared in 1847. Its passionate love story and trenchant social themes make it ripe for continual revisiting. Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern is offering a new version that has admirable individual qualities but not a unified or consistent whole.
Adaptor Melissa Lozoff, a professional actress and teacher at Carrboro's ArtsCenter, crafts a straightforward telling of the turbulent relationship between Jane and her employer, Edward Rochester. As with any adaptation, she leaves out or telescopes certain characters and events, but her two-act, two-hour script keeps all the familiar moments.
Lozoff impressively relates the story with only six additional actors beyond those playing Jane and Edward. Schoolrooms, parties and weddings seem fully peopled through clever manipulation of actors in multiple roles.
Little Green Pig is known for grand reinterpretations and for mining humor from serious situations. The company's approach here seems merely layered on. Mixing modern and period costumes and music, staging mysterious pre-show activities with a life-size cutout of Jane, and having adults as over-the-top exaggerations of children seem afterthoughts rather than intrinsic ideas.
There are several arresting sequences - spooky candlelit lurkings, Jane's wedding veil as a tightly wound shroud, the hallucinatory chaos of the canceled ceremony - but much is staged in a simple, direct manner, giving the production a neither-fish-nor-fowl feeling.
Director Tom Marriott gets fine precision from his cast in their quick changes and prop maneuvering, despite the rather awkward and cramped playing spaces. Derrick Ivey's set of roughly painted platforms and shiny, metallic curtains gives no sense of place, imagined or otherwise. His 1950s satin formals for the supporting females are senselessly distracting among the other more fully period costumes. Andy Parks' sinister lighting, however, supplies appropriate shadows and incendiary flames.
The supporting actors give nicely detailed performances, with special nods to Dan Sipp's missionary and Amanda Watson's nursemaid. Jay O'Berski makes Edward more smug than moody. Emma Nadeau effects a good "plain Jane," neatly communicating quiet spunkiness but turns shrill and unladylike when anger is called for. Still, the two play off each other subtly in their big scenes, providing the evening's best moments.
This particular production would be more successful as an unambiguous presentation of Brontë's timeless tale. (Roy C. Dicks)

Meanwhile, Variety has a short article summarising what's known so far about Cary Fukunaga's forthcoming Jane Eyre.

And The Derby Telegraph reports that a 'rare painting of one of Derbyshire's most historic buildings is expected to fetch up to £50,000 at auction.' The historic building is, of course, Haddon Hall, which became Thornfield Hall in both Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre and Jane Eyre 2006. The painting goes under the hammer on the same day and at the same place - Sotheby's - that the Brontë items to be auctioned on December 17th. Click here to see the painting (by William James Blacklock).

A London Free Press blog discusses a Brontë reference in the latest episode of the TV series Being Erica (S02E12: The Importance of Being Erica)

Then the next night, there was more English literature MA glory. Erica Strange, the most beautiful woman on TV, rallied from the rejection of her thesis - The Woman in the Attic: Hidden Feminism in Jane Eyre - by the chair of UoT's English department (a woman whose father had laughed aloud at her vow to chair said department, a vow made 30 years before, so it must have been the 1960s, this all taking place in one of Being Erica's excellent flashbacks). [...]
I can only say the thesis supervisor's fierce attack on the Jane Eyre idea as having been done before etc. would have melted me into a puddle. I would not have rallied from such a rejection . . . so go Erica Strange, bring on more literary references. (James Reany)

They are not feeling so enthusiastic over at Filmshaft at the prospect of having Len Wiseman direct a Gears of War film. This is graphically described as:

It’s like asking Michael Bay to remake Wuthering Heights! (Alex Wagner)

Susan Hill writes in the Spectator about writing, books and characters.

And they want me to talk about the characters as if they were my family and friends. The way to get serious boos and hisses is to say that the characters do not exist, that they are made-up, chimeras, imaginary people. How dare I say people like that Heathcliff or Mr Rochester, Rebus or James Bond do not exist? I am shattering illusions.

A couple of news outlets suggest the new edition of The Joy of Eating (The Virago Book of Food) as a good present. From The New Zealand Herald:

First published as a hardback in 2006, this paperback version is the perfect holiday read for a lover of food. An anthology of writing about food from women through the years, it includes pieces from the likes of Anne Frank, Beatrix Potter, Emily Bronte, Sylvia Plath and Nigella Lawson. (Amanda Laird)

And from the Business Standard:

The pantheon of great women food writers are here, marching across the page: MFK Fisher, Amanda Hesser, Madhur Jaffrey, Nigella Lawson, Ruth Reichl, Julia Child, Shoba Narayanan. But so are Emilys [sic] Bronte and Dickinson, Gertrude Stein on how to make a meal that looks like a Picasso painting, Banana Yoshimoto on the lure of untenanted kitchens in the dark watches of the night, Frida Kahlo’s wedding feast, Ursula K Le Guin on the diet of Karhiders and Gethenians, Virginia Woolf on eating dry biscuits at Oxford. (Nilanjana S Roy)

Finally, the Manchester Evening News has an article on the forthcoming new Christmassy installments of Cranford and we are reminded that Elizabeth Gaskell was friends with Charlotte Brontë.

On the blogosphere, The Reading Life has joined Laura's Reviews All About the Brontës Challenge.

Categories: Books, Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights