A True Novel to become a true TV series

Times Standard reviews a recent production/concert of Jane Eyre the Musical at the Arkley Center in California.

With its recent, superb production of the brilliant, chamber concert musical revision of Charlotte Brontë’s famous novel, “Jane Eyre,” at the Arkley, Main Stage Humboldt has proven that it can truly live up to its goal — that of fostering artistic collaborations between community and professional artists (nationwide) to strengthen the artistic, cultural results of staging live performances together.

Main Stage has done so by interweaving the exceptional vocal and acting skills of experienced, professional guest artists cast in leading roles, with those of an ever-improving, supporting ensemble cast made up of talented youngsters from its Young Performers Company. The end result was truly a memorable, magical, musical theater experience.

With Brontë’s intrepid, Gothic heroine as the title figure, the original Tony Award-nominated 2000 version of the Broadway musical had its gorgeous music and lyrics composed by Paul Gordon, with additional lyrics and book by John Caird. [...]

Appearing in the demanding title role as Jane Eyre was professional actor/singer Chelsea LeValley, and she was stunning. Rarely has a voice of her strength and beauty (as well as her perfect portrayal from an acting standpoint alone) ever graced the Arkley. She is a Broadway caliber performer who deserves to be there in the future.

Balancing her well, both vocally and dramatically, as Jane’s love interest, Rochester (and also as Brocklehurst) was experienced singer/actor Martin Lehman (a returning Main Stage favorite as Warbucks in “Annie”; Archibald Craven in “Secret Garden”; and Captain Von Trapp in “Sound of Music”). His duets with LeValley are standouts for them both.

Another returning, polished performer to the Arkley stage was Cynthia Dario, adding her vocal and acting skills as Jane’s scheming aunt, Mrs. Reed; Rochester’s Thornfield housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax; and Others. She last appeared here as the Mother Abbess in “Sound of Music.”

In “Jane Eyre,” Main Stage also welcomed the talented Reagan Geach in the roles of John Reed, Mason, and St. John Rivers; and the marvelous Mackenzie Urch as Jane’s mother; friend Helen Burns; and Others. (Her vocal numbers as Helen were particularly beautiful. [...]

In a concert performance (like the one at the Arkley), there was no actual “scenic design” on stage. Just the “illusion of one” created with curtains hanging behind an empty space that had a few chairs set here and there with movable music stands in front of them.

This is where the main characters sat as their choreographed blocking took them on or off stage during a spoken scene or musical number.

And every member of the cast ensemble moved seamlessly, all carrying copies of their spoken lines and musical scores in their hands, referring to them as the plot progressed. (LeValley was the only exception at times, leaving her folder on a music stand as she dramatically — as in a “regular play” — fully inhabited her character.) (Beti Webb Trauth)

On iNews, writer Arifa Akbar mentions her love for Wuthering Heights.

Who is your favourite author and why do you admire them?

My first favourite book was Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights for its wildness and outsider spirit, and it still holds that place in my heart. But the living authors I love most are Kazuo Ishiguro and Ali Smith. Their writing is very different but equally beautiful; their worlds and characters stay with me long after I’ve read them.

While in the Daily Mail writer Julian Barnes says Wuthering Heights left him cold.

[What book] . . . left you cold? 

I’ve always had great difficulty with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: all those needless, confusing (and implausible) layers of narrative one on top of the other; not to mention the heightened, almost hysterical tone. Whereas I consider her sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre a great masterpiece. 

Focus Features puts the spotlight on Cary Fukunaga's 2011 adaptation of Jane Eyre.

When Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was released over a decade ago, some critics wondered how a California-raised, snow-boarding director of Japanese descent, one whose previous film, Sin Nombre, took on Latin American immigration with gritty realism, would handle one of the classics of English literature. The answer turned out to be startling. Released to critical acclaim and popular fanfare, Jane Eyre is now considered a classic. (Read more)

Variety reports that there are plans afoot to adapt Mizumura Minae's A True Novel to the screen.

Upgrade Productions, the production company launched last year by Matt Brodlie and Jonathan Kier, is working on an epic Japanese-language TV series.

The company has teamed with venerable Japanese studio Shochiku to produce “A True Novel” as an eight-part adaptation of Mizumura Minae’s 2003 Yomiuri Prize-winning novel. Inspired by Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” the sweeping family narrative is set in the decades after World War II in Japan and the U.S. (Patrick Frater)

Vogue features the film Eiffel starring Emma Mackey.

Emma Mackey is no stranger to elaborate period costumes. Since her breakout as the deliciously acerbic Maeve Wiley in Sex Education, the 26-year-old French-British actor has donned showstopping ballgowns as Jacqueline de Bellefort in Death on the Nile and will soon be seen in bonnets and hoop skirts in Frances O’Connor’s elemental Emily Brontë biopic, Emily. But, before we watch her penning masterpieces and traipsing across the Yorkshire moors – and long before we see her in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, in a role that remains shrouded in mystery – she’ll appear in a corset, with her hair in an elaborate updo, in another ravishing 19th-century drama. (Radhika Seth)

The Guardian reviews the screen adaptation of The Essex Serpent.

For all that, there is something strangely cold and sluggish about the adaptation of Perry’s book, which despite being a novel of ideas, was lush and vibrant, too. Although it excavated the links between myth, science and religion, it held up love in all its forms to the light as well. Platonic love, sexual love, requited and unrequited romantic love, love of a child, of a vocation, of discovery, of God. It was Wuthering Heights pulled into shape and given intellectual rigour without losing any of its sweeping gothic passion. But on screen, abundance has become austerity, suppressed feeling shades into inertia and the protagonists keep treading and retreading the same small patch of argumentative ground instead of sparking off each other and forging the greater and greater bond on which the story should turn. (Lucy Mangan)

'Some thoughts on the latest Brontë talks' given to the Brussels Brontë Group on the Brussels Brontë Blog.