Jane Eyre: no model candidate for social distancing

Several sites review the recent broadcast of Sally Cookson's stage adaptation of Jane Eyre on the National Theatre YouTube channel. The Arts Desk gives it 4 out of 5 stars:

While other adaptations centre the romance, Cookson makes clear that this is Jane’s life story, in which she, and other women, chafe against the restrictions placed on their sex. Notably, the production is bookended by the defining phrase “It’s a girl”. Jane is constantly forced into a too-small space, whether locked in the Red Room by her cruel aunt, made to stand on a tiny stool by the bullying proprietor of Lowood School, Mr Brocklehurst [...], or simply fenced in by traditional female pursuits like quiet sewing when she longs to be challenged, to shout and run and grow. Worrall puts real ferocity into the words “Women feel just as men feel”. [...]
The excellent company multi-roles and acts as chorus for Jane, amplifying her thoughts and dilemmas. Among them, Felix Hayes is a bitter, seething Rochester, tormented by his failings, who sees in Jane not just love but some kind of solace. Laura Elphinstone gives us a hyperactive young Adele, and makes the saintly Helen bearable by portraying her as an empathetic, perceptive pragmatist. Craig Edwards’ Mr Brocklehurst embodies the repressive, status-obsessed church, and Edwards is also thoroughly delightful scrambling about the stage as Pilot the dog. Simone Saunders is a kindly Bessie and snooty Blanche Ingram, while Maggie Tagney provides a cheerily bustling Mrs Fairfax, but imbues Jane’s aunt with real venom.
Although Cookson makes every narrative element engaging, including the energetic journeying, this three-hour-plus production (originally a two-part adaptation) does feel overlong – and the book’s structure means there’s an inevitable Act II lag when Jane departs Thornfield. It’s lacking, too, Brontë’s vivid sense of place. But it’s beautifully presented in NT Live’s filming, and, with its emphasis on valuing everyone, and on the power of the imagination to help us transcend our enclosures, it’s another clever choice for shutdown viewing – plus a bold, creative production to share with a wide audience. (Marianka Swain)

The Reviews Hub gives it 4 1/2 stars out of 5, describing it as 'Bold, breathless, exciting'.

In devising this play, Cookson has said it was a collaborative effort, formed through workshops rather than an already finished script, and this is clear from the start. Though the novel’s narrative often feels like one of isolation, a singular person battling on, much of this production is made up of chorus work. Even in moments of solitude, Jane is accompanied by an inner monologue ensemble, giving breadth and weight to her thoughts and feelings.
Cookson has also somehow found levity, even humour in this usually very serious story. Pilot the dog, as played by Craig Edwards, is a particular highlight, the more so because Edwards also plays the very stern and cruel Mr Brocklehurst, headmaster of Jane’s school, and it feels strangely triumphant to see him sprawled on the floor, wagging his tail after he has been so mean to our Jane.
Most of the cast is granted this impressive range of characters: Laura Elphinstone who plays Jane’s poorly school friend is later reborn as the cold, even-tempered St. John; Simone Saunders, playing kindly servant Bessie reappears as the beautiful, pompous Blanche Ingram. It all feels very playful, surreal even, and though perhaps in other hands it might have gone very differently, this cast is more than up to the task, giving depth and nuance to every role.
It feels so unlikely that a production of Jane Eyre should be punchy and breathless, packed full of action and excitement. And yet, Cookson delivers this and more, reinventing plain Jane as a modern-day heroine. (Miriam Sallon)

Morning Star gives it 4 out 5 stars.

Contemporary critics of the novel have questioned the apparent silencing of Bertha (Melanie Marshall) but Cookson’s production puts Bertha onstage and, through music, gives her a voice. It’s a highly effective technique.
Indeed, music is deployed effectively throughout, from moody soundscapes to English folk melodies and a remarkably moving version of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy.
In a strong ensemble, the ever-pleasing Laura Elphinstone does a wonderful job as a range of characters from Jane's school friend Helen Burns to St John Rivers who, in his icy embrace of principle over passion, is a foil to Rochester.
Madeleine Worrall as Jane Eyre and Felix King as Rochester conjure a remarkable electricity in their portrayals of these two unique literary characters.
Watching live-streamed drama is an unusual experience. There’s the pleasure of watching theatre — after all, it’s been a while — but the screen is an odd barrier.
That said, this production is filmed well, using enough long shots to remind us that we’re in a theatre and allowing us see the full scale and scope of Michael Vale’s majestic stripped-down set, while close-ups create an intimacy perhaps lacking in a large-scale production on stage. (Katherine M Graham)

2nd from Bottom reviews it too.

Cherwell picked Jane Eyre as Friday Favourite yesterday with special attention to the typhus epidemic in Lowood.

Jane herself is no model candidate for social distancing – anyone who has read Jane Eyre will remember one of the most moving scenes in the book, in which Jane sleeps beside her dying friend, “face against Helen Burns’ shoulder, arms around her neck.” Helen is stolen away from us by consumption, not typhus, but nonetheless it is only later that Jane fully understands the gravity of her friend’s disease. “In my ignorance, I understood [the sickness] to be something mild, which time and care would be sure to alleviate”, she tells us regretfully, and here we hear the voice of the older Jane, gently scolding her younger self. Let’s hope that we will not be berating ourselves in the same way, once we are through this.
In many ways, however, the arrival of typhus in Jane Eyre brings as much hope as it does sadness. The sickness period is one of huge personal growth for Jane, who comes to love Lowood after the typhus has run its course, even working there as a teacher a few chapters later. Jane herself retreats into her own kind of quarantine for the rest of the novel, which is littered with internal monologues and depictions of interiority, not least in concerning the imprisonment of Bertha Mason in the attic for a whole other kind of illness.
But with this isolation comes reflection. Just as Jane develops personally, Lowood is forced into an era of social reform: the typhus may disappear, but “not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school.” Brontë writes. “Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degree various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree.” With the rights of the school children recognised, “the school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution.” As political commentators have been quick to point out in recent weeks, our own institutions and world may never be the same again. It has taken the onslaught of a world pandemic to lead us to question our social practices; to interrogate why we have cut back so heavily on healthcare; to wonder how we can look after our NHS in the way it deserves.
Brontë’s book is brilliant precisely because it is able to constantly shed light on our own troubled times. We may be, much like the Victorians, at the mercy of a virus which spreads with terrifying speed – but Jane Eyre is a reminder that there is so much room for hope. Pass by the “fever-room” with all the same speed as Jane, FaceTime your friends on the other side of that door, and, like with Lowood, hold on for an outcome that will change our institutions irrevocably for the better. (Lucy Thynne)

The Times interviews comedian Robin Ince for its Culture Fix column.

My favourite author or book. I think I have read Slaughterhouse-Five most often, with Wide Sargasso Sea a close second. Kurt Vonnegut and Jean Rhys are very different authors, but I find both of them utterly beguiling as human beings. With both of them I have read all of their novels except one as I want to always have something of theirs to come (so I better make sure I time that right; don’t want to die halfway through)

Keighley News reports that

A series of postcards has been produced by Bradford Council for people to use as ‘virtual backgrounds’ when connecting with loved ones via video conferencing software Zoom.
The colourful cards feature a number of well-known landscapes and landmarks from across the district – including Top Withens, the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth, East Riddlesden Hall and Oakworth Station on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. [...]
Their messages urge people to follow the Government guidelines and stay at home, but to visit Bradford district when the crisis is over and restrictions are lifted. The Zoom album can be found on the council Facebook page, @bradfordmdc. (Alistair Shand)

The New York Review of Books reminds readers that the moors are not only associated with the Brontës:

In English literature and history, the moors are associated with the Brontë sisters, but also with Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, a vile pair known as the Moors Murderers, who tortured and killed five children in the 1960s, then buried them on Saddleworth Moor, outside Manchester. One boy’s body has never been found. The expanses, the harshness, the lack of shelter: I see that the moors can seem forbidding. “As you value your life or your reason,” an anonymous letter warns Sir Henry Baskerville in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, “keep away from the moor.” (Rose George)

Evening Standard lists 'The vintage shows we need back on our screens' such as

Jane Eyre - BBC One (2006)
There’s nothing like a good old period drama to make us feel better, and the BBC back-catalogue is full of solid gold.
Among the gems we’d love to see again is the 2006 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, featuring a brilliant, star-making performance from Ruth Wilson in the lead role. Toby Stephens plays Mr Rochester and together the pair had enough sexual tension to set Thornfield Hall on fire (spoiler alert).
Reader, she binge-watched period dramas for the sake of her sanity. (JT)

In the meantime, Yorkshire Live recommends streaming the 1996 adaptation.

Finally, a question from the Financial Times' quiz to make you think:

Charlotte Brontë’s 1849 novel Shirley contains the first recorded use of which alliterative two-word term for frontier America?

If you enjoyed it, remember we have a Brontë quiz courtesy of John Hennessy.