Tea (or coffee?) with Mr Rochester at Haddon Hall

WhatsOnStage reviews Polly Teale's Brontë, currently at The Watermill Theatre, and gives it five stars.

For over 30 years Shared Experience has explored storytelling onstage, finding new ways to share their characters’ interior and exterior worlds. In Brontë, the three sisters who wrote some of the most enduring stories in the English language invite us into their lives and the worlds of their imagination.
Writer Polly Teale directed the premiere in 2005, working on script development with Nancy Meckler, director of this production, and the pair’s long association proves extraordinarily fruitful.
If anything, their revisit is even more richly layered. The performers playing the sisters again begin in modern dress, researchers into the Brontë who transform into the trio, exchanging biographical insights as they help each other into stays and petticoats – and earth-coloured dresses that enhance the beauty of the stage picture even as they underline the drabness of the sisters’ lives.
Maybe it’s a function of Ruth Sutcliffe’s high-walled set, both confining and cocooning from the outside world, but there’s an even greater feeling of bottled-up energy and creativity. The sisters and their brother Branwell (convincingly febrile Mark Edel-Hunt) fire each other’s imaginations in childhood. Later the sisters transmute every life experience, from the humiliation of the governess’s role to errant male behaviour into the richness of their writing
But Teale’s story is not linear. It moves back and forth in time, exploring cause and effect; and in and out of fiction to explore the interior worlds the sisters will share with us in their work. And all this is achieved with such clarity that the audience follows with rapt attention.
She’s served by a pitch perfect cast. Kristin Atherton’s Charlotte burns with creative fire and passion, trapped in a world of workaday drudgery and genteel poverty from which Teale has her emerge to become her alter-ego Jane Eyre, dogged by the wild and fiery id of the madwoman Bertha (Frances McNamee), a dangerously sexual presence in flame red.
Even the world she creates is a man’s world and she shares with her sisters responsibility for their menfolk, their ageing father (superb David Fielder, reprising his roles, as Bronte senior at different ages, Mr Rochester and Charlotte’s kindly husband, curate Bell Nicholls) and the brother whose artistic talent is drowned in drink. Flora Nicholson is touching as the caring supportive Anne. Apparently the most down to earth sister, Nicholson makes it clear she’s nursing the interior life that produces the sensational The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Elizabeth Crarer’s luminous Emily, a free-spirited tomboy with close-cropped hair finds inspiration in the moors beyond the vicarage, and security in the family circle at home. When Emily releases the bird of prey she’s taming and rejoices in it its return, Crarer simply stands on the table and flutters her hands, but the beauty of this image, so central to the story, is heart-stopping. Cathy and Heathcliff, her most famous creations, are wonderfully realised by McNamee and Edel-Hunt. The image of Cathy’s fragile ghost cradling the dying Emily will stay with me. (Judi Herman)

The Yorkshire Post has an article on a new, very interesting initiative:

Car giant Vauxhall has teamed up with Visit Britain to create the road trip, which spans 1,016 miles and takes in locations used for films including Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code and Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
"In all, 10 stops are listed which together cover 23 locations used in 39 films. [...]
Another destination on the tour is Haddon Hall, a medieval manor house in Bakewell which was used for a 1996 Hollywood production of Jane Eyre, along with Elizabeth in 1998, The Princess Bride in 1987, and 2008's The Other Boleyn Girl. (Jeni Harvey)

In spite of the fact that it is not known to have inspired the creation of Thornfield hall, Haddon Hall is taking on a mythical status as the Thornfield Hall. It wasn't just featured in Jane Eyre 1996, but also in Jane Eyre 2006 and is currently in use in Cary Fukunaga's production. And coincidentally, Flickr user jayteacat has uploaded a few nice pictures taken recently at Haddon Hall where props, details and well-known spots can be seen. EDIT: And yet another Jane Eyre 2011 location. On Jim Dixon (Chief Executive of Peak District National Park Authority)'s Twitter we can read:

Good weather and obliging wildlife allowed the last day of filming for Jane Eyre at Stanage Edge on our North Lees Estate yesterday.

We also can add a new name to the cast. Bessie's role will be played by Jayne Wisener. Picture credits: Kris Dickson.

The Huffington Post takes a look at '11 Classic Monster Mashups'. Jane Slayre is one of them:

By Charlotte Brontë and Sherri Browning Erwin, published by Simon and Schuster.
Just out in April 2010, this one recasts Bronte's classic "Jane Eyre" with vampires and slayers and werewolves galore. Library Journal says that it "raises the bar for the next generation of 'monster classics'." (Jessie Kunhardt)

The Daily Kos doesn't seem to need mashups in order to find characters distasteful:

Even after thinking for quite a while, I seem to not be the sort to sit down with horrible types such as Iago. No to Heathcliff. I don’t much like Rebecca’s husband in Rebecca.
Nor am I interested in Rochester though Jane Eyre forgave him.

At the bottom of the article there's a poll asking, 'Who would you have coffee with?' where you can pick Heathcliff or Rochester among others. Rochester is already paired with tea in a (really excellent) book, though.

It looks like British soap operas and the Brontës go hand in hand lately. Apart from Coronation Street, there's Emmerdale, whose recent goings-on are summarised by The Northern Echo:

Hardly surprisingly, Viv is furious although some might think that a woman who names her twins Heathcliff and Cathy deserves all she gets.

And the description of Cathy Knapp, 'former wife of the artist Stefan Knapp' read in The Spectator doesn't stray far from that either.

Cathy is without a doubt a woman from a bygone time, a cross between some kind of Bronte-sisters-figure and a glamorous character from the 1980s soap opera Dynasty! (Charmain Ponnuthurai)

The Brontë Parsonage Blog reports that Helen MacEwan was interviewed for the weekly staff newspaper of the European Commission about the Brussels Brontë Group.

On the blogosphere, Pete's Blog includes a brief review of Wuthering Heights and Mint is crrently reading Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler. The Brontë-Along goes on: cha no ma-ri who recently made Brontë cookies has now turned them into paintings.

Finally, an alert for tonight seen on The Batavia Daily News Online:

The Arts Council for Wyoming County's classic film series has a contemporary flair tonight -- two films from the 1970s. Featured are "Wuthering Heights" (1970) with Timothy Dalton, and "Skin Game" (1971) with James Garner. The free screenings begin at 7 p.m. in the gallery, 31 South Main St., Perry. Call (585) 237-3517.

Categories: Alert, Books, Brussels, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights