With Bravery and Risk

ITV News has a piece on the premiere of the production of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical in London.

Another Jane Eyre theatrical adaptation that will tour England this Autumn is the Mercury Theatre Colchester, Rose Theatre and Storyhouse co-production (in association with Northern Stage), performing Sally Cookson, Mike Akers and the original company's adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's novel. WhatsonStage and others publish the cast:

Olivia Marcus and Gabriel Akuwudike will lead the cast of a new touring production of Jane Eyre, directed by 2025 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award winner Lily Dyble.

The production, based on Sally Cookson, Mike Akers and the original company’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, will premiere at Mercury Theatre Colchester from 26 September to 10 October 2026 before touring to Rose Theatre Kingston, Northern Stage in Newcastle and Storyhouse in Chester. (...)

The creative team includes set designer Anna Yates, costume designer Khadija Raza, movement director Natasha Harrison, lighting designer Lucía Sánchez Roldán, composer and sound designer Joseff Harris, fight director Rachid Sabitri, intimacy director Haruka Kuroda and casting director Helena Palmer.

Dyble said: “What is at the very heart of Jane Eyre is courage in the face of the unknown. I’m thrilled to be delivering this story to audiences with bravery and risk, made possible by this phenomenal cast and creative team.” (Alex Wood)

Positive News asks for rewilding Britain to fight against the recent wildfires:

The purple, treeless moors found across Britain’s uplands can look timeless and wild. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë described “the purple moors” as “a wilderness of heath”. Yet these moors have been shaped by clearance, drainage, grazing, pollution and burning.

Peat records from Keighley Moor in West Yorkshire, not far from Brontë country, reveal a longer story. For most of the past 1,000 years, this landscape would have been much wetter, with abundant peat-forming Sphagnum moss, rather than today’s extensive heather-dominated vegetation created through rotational burning. (Joe Glentworth)

Far Out Magazine thinks that Anna Calder-Marshall's Cathy was one of the worst miscasts of 70s movies:

Anna Calder-Marshall as Cathy Earnshaw, ‘Wuthering Heights’ - 1970

Wuthering Heights has been subjected to adaptations that are good, bad, and highly controversial, but none of them has been as dull and uninspired as the 1970 version directed by Robert Fuest.

While Timothy Dalton does have the stoic, stony gravitas needed to play Heathcliff, there’s little he can do when paired with Anna Calder-Marshall’s take on Cathy Earnshaw. This is a literary character known for her unbridled passion, venomous rage, and repressed sexuality, but Calder-Marshall depicts her as a soapy hero only defined by the tragedy that the story concludes with.

Even if the G-rated version was not going to go to the extremities seen in the Andrea Arnold and Emerald Fennell versions of the story, it still needed to be interesting as a romantic drama. Sadly, Calder-Marshall doesn’t even have a dose of chemistry with Dalton. (Liam Gaughan)

La Información (Spain) celebrates the 136th anniversary (August 24th, 1890) of Jean Rhys: 

Jean Rhys, 136 años después: la escritora que rescató a una mujer recluida en un ático de Jane Eyre.

Se cumplen 136 años de su nacimiento, una efeméride que devuelve la atención a la autora que convirtió a una figura secundaria de la literatura victoriana en protagonista de su propia historia (...)

Sin embargo, su mayor reconocimiento llegó décadas después con Ancho mar de los Sargazos, publicada en 1966, tras un largo periodo apartada de la escena literaria. Un ejemplo de cómo los años de pausa o alejados de la actividad literaria más visible no implican un alejamiento del verdadero oficio del escritor.

La obra dialoga directamente con Jane Eyre, el clásico que Charlotte Brontë publicó en 1847. Rhys recuperó a Bertha Mason, la esposa criolla de Rochester recluida en el ático, y reconstruyó su historia como Antoinette Cosway. El cambio de perspectiva permite abordar el pasado colonial caribeño, la identidad y las relaciones de poder que atraviesan al personaje. (Carmen Tomàs) (Translation)

El Debate (México) recommends readings according to your month of birth. For the January ones:

Jane Eyre

Enero tiene algo de comienzo. Después de las fiestas, muchas personas sienten la necesidad de ordenar su vida, cerrar ciclos y pensar qué quieren hacer diferente durante el nuevo año. Por eso, Jane Eyre puede ser una lectura especialmente atractiva para inaugurar el calendario.

La novela de Charlotte Brontë sigue a Jane, una joven que atraviesa pérdidas, dificultades y relaciones complejas mientras intenta construir una vida en la que pueda conservar su independencia y dignidad. No es solamente una historia de amor: también habla de identidad, autonomía y de la búsqueda de un lugar propio. 

Es un libro ideal para quien quiere empezar el año con una historia intensa y clásica, pero que todavía puede sentirse sorprendentemente moderna en sus preguntas sobre libertad y decisiones personales.

Si naciste en enero, este podría ser tu libro: una historia sobre empezar de nuevo sin renunciar a quién eres. (Ciria Alarcón) (Translation)

The Herald Sun (Australia) publishes something about a hen party of someone who is marrying someone else sometime in 2026. The party was supposed to be Wuthering Heights-themed or something:

As the wedding of the year fast approaches, Bec Harding was in full hen’s mode at the weekend.

[Rebecca] Harding and Andy Lee are set to tie the knot in New York in October.

She looked ravishing in red as her Wuthering Heights-themed hen’s party took place on Saturday in Melbourne. (Jackie Eptstein)