Jane Eyre: 'never less than a rollicking ride'

 Daily Mail gives 4 out of 5 stars to the streaming version of Blackeyed Theatre's Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre is one of the hardest working heroines in all of Victorian literature. She's a cast-iron steam engine of a character who really puts in the hours, shuttling from stage to screen and back again, in countless adaptations.

And here she is again, in a new stage version of Charlotte Bronte's classic 19th-century novel, from Bracknell's estimable Blackeyed Theatre company (filmed on stage the day before Lockdown II began).

One benefit of Nick Lane's deft and pacy retelling is that it clocks in at under two hours. Nor did I feel there was much missing from the life of hardy orphan Jane, who toughs out childhood neglect, shrugs off school-room bullying — and eventually finds love and independence on her own uncompromising terms. One-part nightmare (like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) and one-part Mills & Boon romance, her story is never less than a rollicking ride.

So it is again in Adrian McDougall's taut production that matches the story's grim northern ways with sometimes impenetrable gothic lighting and a tumbledown, barn-like set.

An upright piano threatens to add the musical austerity of a Methodist church hall, but the Victorian melodrama is instead borne along on the fast-flowing currents of composer George Jennings's lush, rippling Rachmaninov-style score.

Some of the characters are a little cartoonish — snarling aunts, pompous pastors and wholesomely doting friends. But despite bustling about in a businesslike grey tartan dress, Kelsey Short's Jane provides a still, stern and steely centre.

This is a woman who says she means to dodge Hell 'by not dying', and I'd have liked to see her let her hair down a little more. Luckily, as her beloved Rochester, Ben Warwick is a sufficiently roguish, desirable and inscrutable alpha male who adds a little sauce to the saga. (Patrick Marmion)

Bloody Disgusting features the work of Val Lewton, including

I Walked with a Zombie

For Lewton’s next production, RKO provided him with a title; I Walked with a Zombie. He instructed his writers to research Haitian voodoo practices and look to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for structure purposes. Tourneur and Robson both carried over in director and editor capacity, respectively. In the film, Young Canadian nurse Betsy (Frances Dee) relays how she once walked with a zombie, recounting the tale of her job caring for the wife of a sugar plantation owner on a Caribbean island. The wife, naturally, has been acting very strangely. Voodoo zombies factor into this atmospheric gem in a big way, of course. There’s a dreamlike quality about I Walked with a Zombie, and it was progressive for its time for the somber portrayal of slaves. (Meagan Navarro)

Onirik (France) reviews the French translation of Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter.

La plus anglaise de romancières australiennes nous revient en poche avec une histoire de fantôme, de secrets de famille et demeures poussiéreuses. Comme dans tout bon roman anglais, comme Rebecca ou Jane Eyre (le nom Thornfield apparaît même au détour des pages, la référence est claire), le point de départ est une incroyable maison, lieu de tous les mystères, Birchwood Manor. (Claire) (Translation)