If you think the novelist Emily Bronte is something to sing about, a performance at Worcester's Huntingdon Hall will be right up your street.
The Unthanks are inviting an audience to experience "the darkly passionate world of Emily Brontë, with a song cycle bearing all the quiet beauty for which they are known and loved". Commissioned to mark Brontë’s 200th birthday, and using her original cabinet piano to write on, Yorkshire born Unthanks composer Adrian McNally has turned ten of her poems into song, performed with band mates Rachel and Becky Unthank and recorded in the parsonage in Haworth where Emily lived and worked.
The spokesman added: "Captured and released as Part 3 of Lines - a trilogy of records inspired by female writers across time - this live performance of The Emily Brontë Song Cycle will also feature songs from the other records that make up Lines, promising an atmospheric evening, and, at its heart, a unique collaboration between a literary great and one of the most innovative and critically acclaimed bands working today. (Gary Bills-Geddes)
The Basingstoke Gazette reviews the performances of
Blackeyed Theatre touring production of Jane Eyre:
With a cast totalling five members, the actors switched personas without any confusion. Whether it is Camilla Simson swapping from the up front Mrs Fairfax to the fun loving Mary Rivers to Elanor Toms adorable Adele changing to the snobby Blanche Ingram, it didn’t take the audience out of the experience.
Our narrator at the Haymarket, Miss Eyre, played by Kelsey Short, is confident and shy all in the same movement.
As the lead Short does exactly what you want her to do, your eye is fixed on her throughout as the supporting cast flow around her changing the set, playing music and moving the story along.
Ben Warwick plays Brontë’s classic macho man Edward Rochester with panache and just the right amount of swagger. Warwick and Short make a believable and natural romantic duo.
The use of music throughout the play is a clever addition as it is not a background addition, it is at the forefront of the stage, with the cast using the music to move the narrative along.
It is also the minimal stage probs which really help create a bigger world, in particular when Jane is being given the tour of Thornfield Hall, where chairs and benches are used to create its grand rooms and corridors.
But the star of the show is Short, she is shy and retiring when it is needed, confident and brash when called upon and passionate when she is driven, the actress truly embodies the spirit of Jane Eyre and tells her story in such a compelling way.
This is a refreshing and honest adaptation of a classic tale of which the famous novelist would most definitely approve. (Tim Birkbeck)
A new, not very good, review of Cathy Marston's
Jane Eyre ballet as performed in Chicago on
The Wonderful World of Dance:
Jane and Rochester’s pas de deux are cold and restrained, a succession of lifts with pretty poses, but not much more. Rochester, danced by Greig Matthews, fades into the background. This is disappointing not only because of the technical and creative drabness of the choreography, but also because of the lackluster acting performance that accompanies it.
Matthews was a true standout last spring in Joffrey’s triple bill Across the Pond, yet in this principal role, poor direction and watered-down material hampered what I believe is his true potential. Not much more can be said of protagonist Amanda Assucena, who in previous Joffrey productions has also shined far brighter. Also especially troubling was the complete absence of chemistry in the pairing of these two otherwise strong dancers. The moments of ecstatic love between the couple should have sizzled, but ultimately fizzled with lacklustre steps and zero emotional intensity. (Justine Bayod Espoz)
Better reviews can be read on
Stage and Cinema and
Third Coast Review:
Marston utilizes a kind of grounded technique, almost quirky, with curling and unfurling limbs and a use of gravity that is quite contemporary. She uses steps and movement to demonstrate character and temperament, as in the quivering ward Adele Varens, convincingly and youthfully danced by Cara Marie Gary. Marston utilizes a grand sense of composition to delineate and showcase the drama. As she arrays the dancers on the set she created with Patrick Kinmonth, it’s as if paintings at the National Gallery are coming to life. This is a masterwork and it is set to a score by Phillip Feeney that breathes with the dancers and is like a film score evoking emotion, played live by the wonderful Chicago Philharmonic led by Scott Speck. This ballet is on all counts beautiful and approachable like a Masterpiece Theatre drama. It evokes the legacy of the great British choreography of Frederick Ashton and is a marvelous night in the theater of athleticism and grace. I do hope though, with the move to a new home, that we will soon see stories that speak to the brave new world we live in. (Angela Allyn)
The Telegraph & Argus announces the upcoming unveiling of a blue plaque at the Thornton Brontë birthplace:
"Alongside world-famous festivals and our Brontë heritage, this new Wrose plaque helps cement the Bradford district’s reputation as a real destination for literature lovers.”
Malachi’s blue plaque is the latest installation as part of Bradford’s newly-launched blue plaque scheme.
On Tuesday, October 29, Bradford Civic Society will be unveiling a blue plaque for George Cross recipient Barabara Harrison, and there will be a further unveiling at the Thornton birthplace of the Brontë family later this year. (Felicity Macnamara)
The Guardian's Book Clinic makes a passing reference to
Wuthering Heights:
Literary works provide us with an abundance of useful material, whether classic fairytales such as Cinderella, or novels such as Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Mary Renault’s The Bull from the Sea, or Joanna Trollope’s Other People’s Children – each a beautifully crafted engagement with the vicissitudes of stepfamilies. (Brett Kahr)
Also in
The Guardian, the one and only Patti Smith:
The author and musician on Jean Genet, Little Women and crying over Charlotte Brontë
The last book that made me cry
After surrendering to the omnipresent atmosphere of Villette by Charlotte Brontë, I was heartbroken at the book’s end. So much so, that I wrote a small alternative ending.
Go Tech Daily reviews the graphic novel
Rain by Mary and Bryan Talbot:
Cath comes from London and Mitch from the fictional Thrushcross, a friendly, well-ordered city of stone and slate beneath the bare hills of the Brontë country. The background is a beautifully drawn patchwork of rolling fields, dry stone walls and steep rocks, with grouse that bursts into the pale sky above him. (Thomas Shaw)
News.de recommends
Jane Eyre 2011 (on
MDR Media Library, just for German viewers).
Spettakolo! (Italy) interviews the singer Romina Falconi:
Penso a Jane Eyre: lei aveva il dilemma tra l’essere dignitosa e l’essere felice. Ecco, io preferisco essere felice: la dignità nelle mie canzoni non mi avrà mai. (Chiara Rita Persico) (Translation)
El Independiente (Spain) celebrated women's writers day with a selection of novels:
Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë
La poderosa y hosca figura del atormentado Heathcliff domina Cumbres Borrascosas , novela apasionada y tempestuosa cuya sensibilidad se adelantó a su tiempo. Los brumosos y sombríos páramos de Yorkshire son el singular escenario donde se desarrolla con fuerza arrebatadora esta historia de venganza y odio, de pasiones desatadas y amores desesperados que van más allá de la muerte y que hacen de ella una de las obras más singulares y atractivas de todos los tiempos. (Carolina Álvarez Albalá) (Translation)
La Voz de Asturias (Spain) talks about Siri Hustvedt, Princess of Asturias Literature Award 2019:
El suspense que imprime en sus novelas también tiene su explicación: «Me enamoré de Jane Eire (sic), de Cumbres borrascosas, y Dickens (sobre el que hizo su tesis doctoral), sobre todo en sus últimas novelas, usaba los argumentos de suspense para avanzar en la historia. Leer ciencia es un misterio de la vida en cierto sentido». (Elena G. Bandera)(Translation)
Aufeminin (France) interviews the writer Virginie Delage:
Les livres qui m’ont marquée par ailleurs sont sûrement ceux que j’ai lu « au bon moment », à une période de ma vie où ils résonnaient plus particulièrement. Il y a donc de tout, ça peut aller du Journal de Bridget Jones à 1984, en passant par Les Hauts de Hurlevent, L'attrape coeur, La jeune fille à la Perle, La promesse de l’aube, La nuit des temps… (Melanie Bonvard) (Translation)
Interesting Literature lists
Regret by Charlotte Brontë as one of the best poems about ... well, regret. Fire and the Brontës on
AnneBrontë.org. The
Brussels Brontë Blog publishes an account of the recent
Patsy Stoneman talk on biographies of the Brontës.
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