An outstanding theatrical experience for years to come

If you are curious about the new take on Jane Eyre the Musical currently on stage in Cleveland, you might want to head over to Playbill, which has a short clip on it, and which has definitely left us wanting more. Cleveland Scene reviews the production:

Sternfeld and the creators amp up the wattage by having the ensemble of actors share the narration which came originally from Jane herself. And thanks to the near-constant stylized movement fashioned by choreographer Martin Cespedes, there is a sense of things happening all the time when in reality it’s pretty static.
The play is blessed with two immensely strong performers in the leads. In the title role, Andrea Goss cranks a powerful voice from her small frame, and while she isn’t as homely as Jane Eyre was said to be, one feels her vulnerability as she tries to forge a life for herself against all odds. As the wealthy Edward Rochester, Matt Bogart invests each of his songs with rich nuance that sometimes isn’t present in the words and notes.
About the music: While the show isn’t sung-through, it is often in recitative mode, and this can become a bit repetitive at times as it follows the dips and swells of a composition that, while beautiful, eventually becomes overly familiar. This situation improves in Act Two when some more distinctive songs—a humorous turn in “The Gypsy” and the equally diverting “Slip of a Girl”—drop in to break the pace. [...]
What works particularly well in this production is the highly coordinated ensemble movement that often end in a variety of tableaux with well-honed body lines or gestures that convey the mood of the moment. It is fascinating to watch.
What works less well is the music when it settles into its comfortable groove and doesn’t seek out surprising new avenues to pursue. This is particularly noticeable in the three duets featuring Jane and Rochester that, while sung skillfully and with passion, never rise musically to the distinctive level one might desire. When you find yourself paying more attention to the vocal craftsmanship rather than the soaring emotion, there’s a problem. [...]
“Jane Eyre” is a romance tucked inside a not-so-quiet feminist screed, down to the well-known crazy woman in the attic. Back then, the words had to be softer and the attacks more oblique back when Brontë wrote them. But this production shows a clear path to making Jane Eyre, the new revised musical version, an outstanding theatrical experience for years to come. (Christine Howey)

Still on stage matters, Houston Chronicle reviews a local production of Jen Silverman’s The Moors.

There is absurdism, sexuality, rude language, singing and feminist ideologies that you wouldn’t ever find in “Jane Eyre.” Silverman doesn’t just smash history to bits, though. She smartly points out how radical the Brontë sisters’ works were, how exciting it was for an author of that era to acknowledge the emotional complexities of the women who were rarely allowed to show them off in public. But Silverman is also unsatisfied with the limitations of the Brontës’ time and pushes the storylines they explored into deeper territory. (Wei-Huan Chen)

The New Yorker has an article on 'The Unjustly Overlooked Victorian Novelist Elizabeth Gaskell', inspired by Nell Stevens's new book The Victorian and the Romantic.

She viewed the first moments of motherhood as the “acme of [a woman’s] life”; believing that women were generally happier when married, she encouraged a highly ambivalent Charlotte Brontë (the two were good friends) to accept the proposal of her father’s curate. She strongly disapproved of George Eliot living with a man out of wedlock. (...)
Nothing could have been crueller to the latter than seeing, in the hands of sharp-eyed undergraduate Gaskell-impersonators, Austen’s subtext become text and her sentences grow cluttered with details of personal appearance and domestic interior.) George Eliot is more intellectual and more ambitious than Gaskell, her narrators more penetrating and empathetic. The Brontës are more intense and more intensely weird. (...)
In 1897, an anthology of essays celebrating “women novelists of Queen Victoria’s reign” declared Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot to be “pre-eminent,” possessing a “genius which time, fashion or progress cannot dim or take from.” Today, Charlotte Brontë and Eliot, along with Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, have far eclipsed Gaskell in popularity. Gaskell’s house in Manchester, recently restored and running a lively program of talks, workshops, and book groups, receives less than a tenth of the visitors that come from all over the world to marvel at the miniature books and open moors of the Brontë Parsonage, which is a little more than an hour’s drive away. Gaskell’s bicentenary, in 2010, received nothing like the avalanche of articles, books, and adaptations that have accompanied the recent bicentenaries of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, and of each of Austen’s novels. And, although the BBC has made beloved adaptations of Gaskell’s “North and South” and “Cranford,” we have yet to see “Wives and Daughters and Zombies,” “Lost in Gaskell” or “Mary Barton: The series.” [...] The Brontës are more intense and more intensely weird. [...] Unlike Eliot and the Brontë sisters, who often set their novels in the past, Gaskell was, in her early works, at least, fiercely and explicitly concerned with the present and its problems. (Hannah Rosefield)

Río Negro (Argentina) recommends Jane Eyre for insomniacs.

Apelar a los clásicos, esos clásicos que pueden haber quedado en alguna biblioteca familiar, es una buena manera de pasar la crisis. Y en ese plan, “Jane Eyre”, de Charlotte Brontë, es el modo perfecto.
La historia, la protagonista, los diálogos, la trama, todo encaja a la perfección en esta novela de Brontë.
Considerada una de las primeras novelas feministas, Jane Eyre es además un retrato del poder y el conflicto, escrita en una época de inestabilidad política y social en una ciudad textil del norte industrial de Inglaterra. En su momento, la novela generó mucha inquietud por su reivindicación de la libertad individual, por la denuncia del hambre que reinaba, no sólo en el aspecto físico, sino también intelectual y emocional; y también por esa protagonista conflictiva que trascendió los tiempos y las modas, y hoy puede ser leído como si hubiera sido escrito ayer nomás. (Verónica Bonacchi) (Translation)

Reader's Digest lists '16 Things Only Middle Children Understand'.

Growing up, your parents weren’t hyper-focused on you like they were on your older sibling, and you didn’t have the extra attention that the coddled youngest got either. Instead, you were always just there, quietly observing the drama unfolding around you. Perhaps that’s why middlers can be great writers—middle-borns Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Ernest Hemingway, Louisa May Alcott, and her fictional Little Women character Jo March were all celebrated authors. (Tina Donvito)

Justificando (Brazil) has Charlotte Brontë (and Mary Wollstonecraft!) publishing her novels halfway through the 20th century.

A atenção para a forma como a mulher e o feminino eram abordadas na sociedade acontece com força somente em meados do século 20, como obras de feministas como Simone de Beauvoir, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Brontë, Mary Wollstonecraft e Virginia Woolf. (Gabriel Prado) (Translation)

TN (Argentina) reviews the film Todos Lo Saben by Asghar Farhadi:

Hasta la resolución, un poco así nomás, Todos lo saben mantiene el interés, a pesar de que varios personajes se desdibujan y Farhadi no parece decidir si es más interesante el viejo amor reencontrado entre el empleado de la familia y la hija de los patrones, a la Cumbres Borrascosas -una referencia que se explicita torpemente-, la tensión del triángulo central, el retrato de costumbres o el thriller. (Mariana Mactas) (Translation)

Town Topics goes in search of Emily Brontë within the pages of Wuthering Heights. Fave Crafts shares a Wuthering Heights colouring page. Writergurlny reviews briefly Eve Sinclair's Jane Eyre Laid Bare (2012).

Finally, an alert at the Pequot Lakes Library. MN:

Thursday, Sept. 6, 10:30 a.m.: First Thursday Book Club meeting. Book to be discussed is "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Brontë. (Via Pine & Lakes Echo Journal)