The Brontës stand the test of time

Keighley News publishes some additional information about the Captured Past exhibition at the Old School Room in Haworth:

Picture: From left, exhibition curator Stephen Whitehead, Matthew Savage who printed and mounted the pictures, Bronte Spirit chairman the Rev Jenny Savage, and Dr Angela Redmond, project officer. (Source)

A Brontë preservation group aims to keep Haworth residents in the picture about their history.
It hopes villagers will flock to the Old School Room for Captured Past, a photographic exhibition covering more than 100 years of Haworth's history.
Some depict the village around the time the Brontë sisters achieved fame with their novels.
The Old School Room is where the three sisters and brother Branwell all taught in the 19th century.
Organisers of the exhibition hope to attract many people who have never before been in the building and spark interest in a £1 million plan to refurbish the building and secure its future.
The Brontë Spirit campaign brings together the Brontë Society, which runs the nearby Parsonage Museum, and neighbouring St Michael and All Saints Church. The groups are spending an initial £43,300 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund planning the restoration project.
Project officer Dr Angela Redmond said: "The oldest photograph was taken the mid-1850s and perfectly illustrates the kind of lifestyle that the Brontë family experienced.
"It also has the Old School Room as a backdrop which is a wonderful link with what we're trying to achieve today.
"Many people who live in the district have never been inside the Old School Room and this will be their chance to have a look around."
Dr Redmond hoped the building could become a heritage centre as well as advancing arts and education within the district.
The exhibition will normally be open seven days a week (1-4pm) until September, and admission is free. The pictures have been supplied by Haworth historian Stephen Wood and the exhibition organiser is Stephen Whitehead. (David Knights)

HollywoodChicago reviews Remy Bumppo's performances of Polly Teale's Brontë in Chicago:

Teale explores the simply celibate life in which storied sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne mostly only have themselves, their pens and their unbridled imaginations. Was it their chastity that unleashed so much repressed titillation or was such eroticism merely a fiery choice for absorbing prose?
Moreover, why well over a century later do their words still haunt our minds? In her decision to return to the beginning with “Brontë,” Teale says we are fascinated by these maidens because they “broke the mold against all odds” and yet “they were made by it,” too.
Having to publish in pseudonym because only men at that time were permitted the right to write, Teale credits their self-educated father as the sisters’ door-opening and awe-inspiring catalyst.
While they were certainly spurred by their brother’s tumultuous personal life, too, it was their father who resiliently swore by the transformative power of literature and art.
In the Chicago realization of this storied mammoth, director James Bohnen about faces the Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater into the Brontë parsonage in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
Set in the year 1845, the cast clearly co-exists in harmony without a weak link and with authentic conviction. That said, Linda Gillum plays the decisive oddity as she is the sisters’ manifestation in written form who alternates from a feather-obsessed worrywart to an erotic canine.
With a 15-minute intermission, the performance’s top-drawer staying power helps you disregard its relatively lengthy time commitment. As a notice to the red-ink department, though, the grandeur of the subject matter sometimes lends to excessive gabbing that can dash out one ear just as swift as it scurried in the other.
More so than her sisters, Carrie A. Coon as the second-eldest Emily epitomizes the readily regarded phenom who died after a fleeting blaze of genius as realized in “Wuthering Heights”. It was her sole novel.
Susan Shunk plays the eldest, Charlotte (best known for famous British novel “Jane Eyre”), and Rachel Sondag rounds out the trio as the youngest, Anne, who history has overshadowed in favor of her more fêted sisters. Sondag typifies Anne’s more sharp, realistic and ironic writing style as a stark contrast to the romanticism exemplified by Charlotte and Emily.
Patrick Clear as Patrick Brontë – who plays their curate father and changed the family’s last name from Brunty to Brontë – masterfully oscillates from a temporary blind man to various other characters through the devices of dialect and mind/body renovation.
Gregory Anderson as the brother, Branwell, delves deeply into the mind of a man who was regarded by the family as its most talented member. Plagued by insurmountable expectations, though, he was driven to binge drinking. Only one scene in this production, though, harks back to the central addiction that launched the meeting of his grim reaper.
Together, these five Brontës stand the test of time as one of the most imperative stories in which to immerse in both written and theatrical form. This Chicago production of the family’s legend would sell even the Brontës themselves on the sweeping meaning of their message. (Adam Fendelman)

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The Independent talks about the paperback edition of Hermione Lee's Body Parts. The review begins with a quote by Elizabeth Gaskell:

"Get as many anecdotes as possible. If you love your reader and want to be read get anecdotes!" This note-to-self, as penned, by Elizabeth Gaskell before she embarked on her life of Charlotte Brontë, is still sound advice for any aspiring biographer. (Emma Hagestadt, Boyd Tonkin & Katy Guest)

And now, some Brontës on the blogosphere: Cartelera10 reviews, in Spanish, Wuthering Heights 1939. Milady Vérité posts about Jane Eyre (?) in Finnish (see comment below) in Estonian. Stellascript suggests a new sci-fi adaptation of Jane Eyre (as a matter of fact there is a Jane Eyre space opera around: Sharon Shinn's Jenna Starborn). This is the proposed new summary:

The Universe, 3830s. Pretty much the same plot, except Thornfield is one of the many moons orbiting the Planet England. Also, it’ll be Commander Rochester instead of Mister, since it sounds so much more sci-fi. (He fought in the Titanium Wars or something.) Rochester’s wife is some kind of fancy cyborg. If she were a robot or a droid, there would be no problem getting rid of her, but because she is partially human, it’s against the law (or something). And because the human part of her is on the crazy side, Rochester has to hide her. She’ll be this perfect blond blue-eyed woman of 21, because she doesn’t age visibly – adding to the creep factor. (Stella)

zuham focuses on the topic of revenge in his/her response to Wuthering Heights, latifah99 is more concerned with the complexity of characters. The Crall Space finds similarities between Jane Eyre and Harry Potter (something that has been discussed previously on BrontëBlog)

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Elizabeth Gaskell, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Theatre, Wuthering Heights