Cornish Jane

Worcester News reviews a local performance of Jane Eyre by Blackeyed Theatre which runs until Saturday (September 28).

Skeletal timbers stand stark against a sky full of foreboding, wooden fingers reaching out into the gloom.
There is no doubt that Alan Valentine’s subtle lighting, combined with Victoria Spearing’s haunting set design, make for a marriage made in hell, depressing in the extreme.
And so it’s therefore the absolutely perfect setting for Charlotte Brontë’s tale of a woman who endures constant prejudice and thwarted hopes to finally triumph over all the odds.
Writer Nick Lane has taken this story of struggle and empowerment and made it very much his own. Entirely Gothic from beginning to end, it is only the haunting, pastoral music of George Jennings that leavens this meagre bread. [...]
The couple dance around each other like late summer dragonflies on a pond, oblivious to the fact that time is running out.
Ben Warwick was born to play the role of Rochester, delivering a stupendously mood- marinaded performance, a sort of Teutonic Aidan Turner emerging through the dry ice rather than the Cornish Atlantic breakers.
This is a cast that has no problem with doubling or even trebling up roles, Camilla Simson, Eleanor Toms executing some very finally timed changes.
Oliver Hamilton in particular deftly switches from bully boy John Reed to pious clergyman St John Rivers in the time that it takes to whip on a dog collar.
This superb production by Blackeyed Theatre marks a dramatic milestone and is warmly recommended. (John Phillpott)

The Irish Times reviews the book The Folklore of Cornwall by Ronald James.

Whereas novelist Charlotte Brontë’s Irish origins were partially obscured by her father’s decision to rework the spelling of the family name Prunty, from the Irish Ó Pronntaigh, to Brontë, Ronald James’ reveals her masterpiece Jane Eyre to have had its origins in a Cornish folktale to which she would have had access via her mother’s side of the family who were from Cornwall. This suggestion on James’s part ties within an age-old tradition whereby the motifs and storylines of a selection of the canons of English literature have at various times been attributed to contact with Celtic storytellers – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is yet another case in point. The same rule of cultural cross-pollination goes for literary works in the English language, then. (Dr Seaghan Mac an tSionnaigh)

Stylist has selected '30 inspirational quotes about strength from literature' including one from Jane Eyre.

“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.” (Francesca Brown)

El periódico (Spain) asked 10 writers to pick their favourite books published in Spain by the publishing house Anagrama.

Ancho Mar de los Sargazos
Jean Rhys
Olga Merino
"Llegué a las páginas de 'Ancho mar de los Sargazos' allá por los primeros 90. Una novela corta, limpia y densa, llena de pasadizos, con tres puntos de vista. Me impresionó la mirada de Jean Rhys y sobre todo que le diera voz, al fin, a Antoinette Cosway, la primera mujer de Rochester, la loca encerrada en el desván que prende fuego a la mansión en 'Jane Eyre'. Ambas novelas, la de Rhys y la de Charlotte Brontë, deberían leerse juntas". (Elena Hevia) (Translation)

PopMatters discusses Kathryn Bond Stockton's Making Out.

The points raised can seem oblique, impenetrable, and overwhelming, but a reader's patience will be rewarded. Stockton writes that "…we recognize how the text inside us contributes to meaning's being plural and partial…" She takes us through journeys into Nabokov (Lolita) and Charlotte Brontë (Vilette[sic]), but her narrative is strongest when considering questions of how identities are formed[.] (Christopher John Stephens)

The Stage reviews Yaël Farber's production of Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding at the Young Vic in London.

Moments also descend, oddly, into a kind of paperback bodice-buster with Gavin Drea’s Heathcliff-esque Leonardo, a strapping young man tossing his forelocks and riding a horse bare-chested. (Tim Bano)

Jane Eyre is one of five other books that you should read before falling in love, according to Caras (Mexico). Breathe, write, read posts about Wuthering Heights.