Jane Eyre and Anne Shirley

Times Square Chronicles reviews the stage production The Moors.

Over the windswept brutal terrain at The Duke on 42nd Street comes Jen Silverman’s The Moors, a weirdly satirical take on the Brontë sisters. Here lesbianism rules, as does a violent mindset. Isolated in the 19th-century deranged homestead are the cruel and forbidding Agatha (Linda Powell), her sister, Huldeygard (Birgit Huppuch) who longs to have her diary read and their scullery maid, Marjory or Mallory (Hannah Cabell), depending on what room you are in. One of them is pregnant and the other has typhus. Last but not least is the family dog, Mastiff (Andrew Garman). Enter Emilie (Chasten Harmon), a newly arrived governess who has fallen in love with Branwell the master of the house through a series of poetic correspondences. Branwell is missing as is her charge. Turns out the writer of the letters is Agatha, who has cruelly in prisoned her brother and was seeking a something more for herself. In the meantime the dog has fallen in love with a Moor-Hen (Teresa Avia Lim), his natural supper.
Most of the show is a pun on the Brontë’s novels and lives. If you are not familiar with the complete works of the Brontë’s you may not find this so amusing. I am a huge fan and even that didn’t help me find the macabre humor.
The cast is all well suited, with each adding the appropriate tone. The fabulous Ms. Cabell again excels. Ms. Huppuch is loony, Ms. Powell straight out of a dominatrix horror novel and Mr. Garman and Ms. Lim animalistic. Ms. Harmon just seems lost. The period costumes by Anita Yavich are stark and forbidding. Dane Laffrey’s set, gives us a brooding atmosphere. The direction by  Mike Donahue, just draws this whole piece out and in the end it is the audience who is lost on these moors.
This is a smart piece, but needs to be honed and less frenetic. (Suzanna Bowling)

The Globe and Mail reviews the new CBC/Netflix production of Anne of Green Gables and describes it as

a coming-of-age story. It’s about an outsider who longs for acceptance and inclusion, to love and be loved. Here, the story of an orphaned girl traumatized by orphanages and by life in the homes of angry strangers is a tiny bit more barbed. It seems more connected to a Brontë spirit and to the tone of those Victorian novels about an orphan desperately in search of a home and fireside. In the opening scenes here, it is made very clear that Anne’s constant talking and vivid renaming of everything around her is a frantic trick to mask the pain she carries. When Anne says, quoting something, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes,” she means it. (John Doyle)

L.M. Montgomery Online reveals that in the case of this new series the connection goes further than that:

My PVR machine has revealed the titles of the first two episodes of the CBC/Netflix television series Anne: “Your Will Shall Decide Your Destiny” and “I Am No Bird, and No Net Ensnares Me.” Both are allusions to Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, which had a profound influence on L.M. Montgomery’s writing. (Benjamin Lefebvre)

More TV as The Guardian looks at what 'TV's most toxic couples can teach us'.

Episodes [of TV series Catastrophe] hum with both hilarious barbs and fears about the tentativeness of their reunion. “It’s fucking ... rude,” Sharon responds to Rob’s accusation that she’s slept with someone else. “What are you – a Brontë sister?” he flings back. (Lara Williams)

Spiked claims that there is no such thing as 'girls' literature':

The idea that women are underrepresented in literature is bizarre. From Jane Austen to the Brontës, George Eliot to Virginia Woolf, through to Daphne du Maurier, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch and Margaret Atwood, the list of female novelists goes on and on. These authors have been read by women and men alike, studied, celebrated and recommended. In the past, some female authors used pseudonyms to get published, but this was, in part at least, to secure a wide audience for their work and to avoid the label ‘women’s books’. [...]
In fact, young readers relate to literary characters and picture themselves in the fictional world created by an author. When I was 13, I read Gone With The Wind, followed by Wuthering Heights. I was first Scarlett, then Cathy – I felt the passion, the emotion, the follow-you-to-the-ends-of-the-earth love expressed by those characters. But I revelled in it all the more intensely because it was so distant from my own reality. (Joanna Williams)

A Brontëite dog in Grand Haven Tribune:

Her protruding ribs weren’t evident until we trimmed off the mountain of curls. At 29 pounds, Lucy is underweight and needs lots of positive reinforcement during mealtime. I read to her while she eats. We are currently working our way through the Bronte sisters. She especially likes “Wuthering Heights.” (Shari Savage)

OnStage (Italy) lists famous songs inspired by books, the first of which is obviously

1. Wuthering Heights di Kate Bush – Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë
Canzone e libro (nella sua versione originale inglese) hanno lo stesso titolo, perciò sottolineare il legame è quasi superfluo. Il racconto, nella canzone ha il punto di vista di Catherine che, durante una immaginaria visita alla sua vecchia casa, si rivolge all’uomo che ama, Heathcliff, per aiutarla ad entrare dalla finestra. L’inconfondibile voce di Kate e l’allegra danza del video incarnano perfettamente lo spirito del libro. Una curiosità che forse non sapevate: Emily Brontë e Kate Bush sono nate lo stesso giorno! (Eleonora Gasparella) (Translation)

The Quietus describes singer Johnny Rocket as follows:

Outside, on the moors, it's begun to snow, and heavily. Stepping outside with Saoudi for a cigarette, and to admire the bewitching Yorkshire landscape against which he stands ruminating, looking somewhat Heathcliff-esque with his dark, keen stare and long brown coat, talk returns to escapism. (Patrick Clarke)

BCRNews features an elementary school teacher who picks Jane Eyre as one of her favourite books. Emily M. DeArdo posts about the Brontë sisters.