Expiate like Jane Eyre

The Peterborough Telegraph reviews The Brontës of Dunwich Heath... and Cliff.

The bookish Jane (Laura Corbett) wants to write and flourish, but lacks inspiration and stimulus. Her sibling, the delightful Mad Cath (Sophie Reid), is a singer extraordinaire with a passion for performance.
The sea has already taken their mother - or so we think - and it is up to their father, Gilbert Brontë (Harry Waller), to save his church from the sea and the village from Parliament. Perhaps the answers lie with Sir Fred (Cameron Johnson) the mysterious landowner. Or Rochester the brooding bad lad with an outrageous reputation - and a mad woman in the attic?
Cue more than two hours of adventure and wordplay, and lyrics treading the line between seedy, silly and sublime. The virtues of coconut oil for straightening a banana, and love at first sight in the intense glare of the hothouse were deliciously lewd and lascivious: “Would you hand-pollinate my Zucchini please.”
Songs are accompanied by the ukulele, and even two recorders played through the nose by Clare Hawes, who assumes most of the ‘menial roles’ in the production, as well as the ghost.
All five participants swap costumes to take on several roles, with a particular shout-out to 6’7” tall Cameron’s ‘Mrs Rochester’, in a fruity cocktail of a dress.
The studio begs for external participation; willing victims in the audience became babysitters (including yours truly), wives and then ex-wives), shrubs, and even firemen.
We even had a smidgeon of Cliff Richard, and a curiously touching duet between Sir Fred and the Brontës’ deceased mother, in frightening falsetto.
I generally leave Eastern Angles productions marvelling at the interesting slants on established works or views.
This was enjoyable, but did feel quite aimless at times; no production should be predictable, but I did feel a little bewildered on more than one occasion.
It also could have done with the odd judicious snip here and there - I found my attention wandering a couple of times, and that’s a rare and uncomfortable sensation for an EA production. (John Baker)

The Independent looks at far we have come since Charlotte Brontë's portrayal of the madwoman in the attic.

For a long time, the mentally ill were dumb and mute in literature. Inarticulacy surrounded those lumped together as Bedlamites: Jane Eyre’s classic “madwoman” in the attic, for instance, served as little more than a plot device, a thing to fear and loathe that got in the way of a Gothic romance. [...]
Since Jane Eyre, we have been re-told the story from the perspective of Rochester’s wife. Many more contemporary stories of mental illness have been, and are being, written as non-fiction and memoir rather than as fiction though. (Arifa Akbar)

The Keighley News lists what Keighley community radio station Jam on Top will be programming in the near future:

The Internet broadcaster will return with popular shows like Spinky’s 70s, Best of British, Brontë Beats and You Know You’re From Keighley When.

We wonder if those are 'our' Brontës, but then again it's usually safe to assume so, because as the Oxford Student says,

Moving on from bizarre games to culture, I was surprised recently to read in an article that Yorkshire has produced very few writers. As far as I’m concerned that assumption is entirely false: as well as being the birth place of Ted Hughes, Alan Bennet, Tony Harrison and W. H. Auden, Yorkshire is most famous for being the home of the Brontë sisters. The dark moors of Wuthering Heights are a very real setting, and the Parsonage the three sisters grew up in can now be visited as a museum. (Adam Leonard)

According to The Statesman (India) the proper way to go about an expiation is to do it the Jane Eyre way:

But she didn't feel forgiven. It was an attempt to expiate but too flitting to be à la Jane Eyre! (Tapan Chatterjee)

And we are sorry we are a day late reporting a talk that took place last night. As seen in the Hebden Bridge Times:

a talk by David Glover on “The Brontës in Calderdale”, which starts at 7.30pm (doors open at 7pm).

Out Of The Best Books posts about Jane Eyre and 500 películas, ya no sé cuántos días... México writes in Spanish about the 2011 adaptation. A Jane Eyre Hairstyle spotted on the Examiner. Urban Earthworm reviews Wuthering Heights.