'Our hearts ache, perhaps more acutely this year, with love, loss, and bittersweet reunion'

British Theatre reviews Blackeyed Theatre's streaming production of Jane Eyre giving it four stars.

This solid, faithful stage adaptation, written by Nick Lane, successfully distils all the key elements and characters of Charlotte Brontë’s story into a lively two hours. It takes us back to her childhood as an orphan, mistreated and unloved by her sanctimonious aunt and packed off to a tough boarding school, and onward through her later adventures as a governess and teacher as her life intersects with the mysterious Mr Rochester. Directed by Adrian McDougall, it rarely lets up pace with extra energy thanks to George Jennings’ live music and songs performed by the cast and the work of movement director Sammy Fonfe.

The story is told by an ensemble of just five actors, led by the excellent Kelsey Short who combines steeliness and vulnerability in her portrayal of Jane. The others take on multiple roles, including Camilla Simson who is fearsome as Aunt Reed but also adds moments of laugh-out-loud comedy as Mrs Fairfax. Ben Warwick is a charming, likeable Rochester, perhaps lacking the more menacing elements that traditionally make him appear a figure to be distrusted. Eleanor Toms flits between characters ranging from the saintly Helen Burns to the brattish Adèle while Oliver Hamilton is an appealing St John Rivers. The gothic style of the novel is beautifully conjured up by Victoria Spearing’s set, from the rustling childhood terrors of the Red Room to Mr Rochester’s gloomy Thornfield Hall, atmospherically lit with shifting light and shadows by lighting designer Alan Valentine.

Originally conceived in 2018, this adaptation returned to the stage last September and its tour of the UK was halted by the Covid-19 shutdown in March. It briefly returned to its original home at the Wilde Theatre at South Hill Park Arts centre in Bracknell in Berkshire in early November, where the performance in front of an actual live audience was filmed for this streaming version. Aside from the applause and the occasional laughter, there is inevitably something lost in transferring a dynamic show to the flat screen but this remains an enjoyable, pacy re-telling of a much-loved story. (Mark Ludmon)

The Stage also gives it 4 stars out of 5. Drama & Theatre reviews it too.

Each actor brings their characters to colourful life, with Short perfectly capturing Jane’s heady mix of infallible inner strength and devastating vulnerability. Her kaleidoscopic emotions throughout both Acts are entirely believable, meaning that I felt the cruel rejection she experienced as a child, as well as the soaring love which later grows for Mr Rochester. 

Unlike in the book, I felt that Helen, Jane’s faithful and only friend at Lowood School, was not on stage long enough to be fully developed, meaning that I felt little emotional investment in her illness. Of course, condensing a 500+ page novel into two hours of engaging theatre inevitably leads to some compromises, and most other characters are given enough time to flourish. 

Toms, who plays Helen, is particularly impressive in her versatility, switching deftly between the whining, spoiled Adele, the pompous Blanche Ingram, and the wholesome, bubbly Diana Rivers, among others. Hamilton’s portrayal of St John is a little heavy-handed at times, but this only serves to heighten the awkward earnestness of Mr Rochester’s pious foil. 

Warwick is an effective Rochester, evoking both frustration and sympathy in the viewer, and his personality seems to evolve and shapeshift throughout the performance. I liked the inventiveness of the animals and the props used, with Warwick’s dramatic lean-back over a human ‘bed’ making for a particularly memorable moment. 

The music, directed by Ellie Verkerk, is a welcome addition to the story, bringing vibrancy, enhancing emotion, and momentarily pulling viewers back from the intensity of the plot. Toms’s voice is stunning, sailing out across the auditorium (one would imagine), and encapsulating the haunting ambience of the tale.

Jane Eyre undoubtedly has gothic elements, if not strictly of the gothic genre, and Blackeyed Theatre’s production capitalises on this without turning it into a horror story. There are terrifying moments, piercing screams, building tensions, unsettling creaks, scratching violins, and madness personified, but all is executed without unnecessary melodrama. Emotions are heighted to precisely the right degree, before being brought back down again with musical relief, or a moment of comic sarcasm of Mrs Fairfax or one of the Rivers sisters.

By the time we reach the final moments, both heart-breaking and tender in equal measures, we do feel as though we have collectively reached the climax – ‘we’ being the audience, although now all scattered across towns and cities, and the characters, in whom we have become invested along the way.

Our hearts ache, perhaps more acutely this year, with love, loss, and bittersweet reunion. Even though it provides little comfort, we are reminded that the emotions we are feeling now have been felt before and will be felt again. Our plights are different, and hardly comparable, but spending two hours with Jane Eyre and Blackeyed Theatre one evening soon will remind you that we can never truly be alone. (Harriet Clifford) 

The Sunday Times also mentions it:

The spring and autumn lockdowns put paid to the live version of Blackeyed Theatre’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, but it has resurfaced as a streaming venture. In Adrian McDougall’s production — recorded at the Wilde Theatre in Bracknell, Berkshire — Kelsey Short plays Jane, while Ben Warwick is the brooding, distant Mr Rochester. In a drama where most of the members of the cast play multiple roles, George Jennings’s music becomes almost a character in its own right. The adaptation is by Nick Lane, who was responsible for the company’s recent reworking of another gothic classic, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (Clive Davis)

Los Angeles Times recommends watching 

Jane Eyre (1944) ★★★ Joan Fontaine, Orson Welles. Charlotte Brontë’s gothic heroine loves her moody employer, who keeps a dark secret hidden from her. (NR) 1 hr. 36 mins. TCM Wed. 5 p.m. (Ed Stockly)

Halifax Examiner (Canada) recommends 'Teaching 19th century literature in a way that won’t make students hate it'.

I co-host a books podcast called Dog-eared and Cracked, and in the latest episode my partner Jay and I discuss Jane Eyre.

I hadn’t read Jane Eyre until a few years ago, and Jay had never read it. Jay and I went to high school together, and it was a fancy kind of place with great books on the curriculum (I remember The Mayor of Casterbridge being on the summer reading list, I think between Grades 8 and 9), but we read almost no books by women. And some of the classics, at least as I remember it, were taught in a way that turned me off them for years.

At one point in the podcast, Jay says he’s happy he’d never read Jane Eyre in high school, because he probably would have hated it, and it would have turned him off a great book that he enjoyed reading now. [...]

Remember that these books were not written as classics. There’s no such thing. These were massive bestsellers. Dickens was such a huge icon of popular culture of his age. The Brontë novelists were a sensation in their time. They made headlines… (Phil)

Daily Times (Pakistan) claims that Jane Eyre 'was perhaps the first novel of prose fiction' (!!!!) and describes Wuthering Heights  pretty weirdly.

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was perhaps the first novel of prose fiction. Bronte’s narrative was focused on the moral and to a larger extent the spiritual journey of the protagonist through a first-person narrative. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a cult classic novel because of its complicated characters. The array of emotions along with tragic deaths make it an engaging read. The novel goes way ahead of a tragic romance novel for it combines the plot, characters, and structure to present a holistic view of the character’s evolution embedded with the author’s perception of the lifestyle depicting the era the novel is set in. (Muhammad Omar Iftikhar)

In Financial Times we find out that writer Bernardine Evaristo is not a Brontëite:

Like many writers, Evaristo was an avid reader, but Jane Austen and the Brontës did nothing for her. Literary influences came instead from poetry, drama and, later, Americans such as Alice Walker and Audre Lorde. Joining the local youth theatre, she was the only black girl (“But I didn’t feel it”), taking the role of Captain Cat in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood — still a favourite. (Suzi Feay)

La Repubblica (Italy) reviews the Italian translation of Brian Dillon's The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives.

Charlotte Brontë invece era così sola a Bruxelles - malinconia e morale mischiate, si era innamorata di un insegnante sposato - che si era ridotta a confessarsi in una chiesa cattolica. (Daria Galateria) (Translation)

National Geographic helps you plan a literary walk through north London. One of the stops is

2. The British Library

Little compares to the historical wisdom held by the world’s largest library, standing proudly on Euston Road. The Treasures of the British Library gallery is worth a peek and, if you have some extra time on your hands, have a browse through its wider collections. From the manuscript of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and the original Beowulf to Shakespeare’s First Folio, there are almost 14 million books to admire. Aside from a cuppa, what more could a bibliophile want? (Jasmina Matulewicz)

Daily Mail recommends a trip to the Yorkshire Dales.

Each hike has a high point – one is Simon’s Seat, the other is Buckden Pike – where we tuck into picnic lunches and marvel at how there are no pylons or roads in sight.

The view of craggy fells stretching towards the horizon is exactly the same as author Charlotte Brontë, who hailed from nearby Haworth, would have seen it two centuries ago. (Jo Kessel)

Interesting Literature looks into the origins of the word 'wuthering'. This month, The Sisters' Room treasure from the Brontë Parsonage is the book Charlotte Brontë made for six-year-old Anne.