Corset training

Valley Advocate reviews Hartford Stage's production of Jane Eyre.

So my first thought on seeing Jane Eyre in the season lineup at Hartford Stage, where it’s playing through March 14, was Why? Why add another retelling of the tale to a long line of predecessors?
The answer, in this adaptation by Elizabeth Williamson, who also directs, is that it does something the book does and screen versions don’t. Where film and TV can render the Yorkshire moors in vivid color and take us along the shadowy hallways of Thornfield Hall, the viewpoint is objective and the story is told, as it were, in the third person. Brontë’s narrative is in the voice of Jane herself (it’s said to be the first-ever novel to be told in the first person by a female protagonist), and so is Williamson’s play.
Jane, played by Helen Sadler, speaks directly to us, the audience, using Brontë’s term “Dear Reader.” As in most versions, much of the dialogue comes straight out of the book, to which is now added Jane’s own thoughts and commentary.
Thus, we not only witness the cruelties visited on the poor orphan child in the home of her callous aunt and at the brutal Lowood Charity School, we have her opinion of them. This approach serves narrative efficiency as well, moving us briskly from place to place on Nick Vaughn’s spare set, where a writing table and a window seat flank a bare stage, and drawing rooms are represented by furniture that glides in and out on a turntable. Atmosphere is provided by Isabella Byrd’s ghostly lighting, Christian Frederickson’s moody music, and flashbacks seen in stark silhouette.
I would have appreciated the first-person device a lot more if Sadler’s approach had been more intimate and inviting. But she seems to think expressing Jane’s ardent spirit and narrative urgency requires excessive volume and overemphasis, more haranguing than confiding. This skews our sympathies for Brontë’s feisty, resilient, outspoken heroine, whose coming of age as a governess in the household of the irascible, secretive Mr. Rochester is both a story of hopeless love finally attained and a tale of mystery and dark secrets, accompanied by midnight shrieks of uncanny laughter.
Chandler Williams’ Rochester makes a refreshing change from the usual brooding Byronic misanthrope. He’s plenty peevish, but also ironic, eccentric, even whimsical, a bit overblown at times but giving the piece its only flashes of spontaneity and humor.
An ensemble of six carry 19 supporting roles. I particularly relished the versatile Felicity Jones Latta as Jane’s imperious aunt, the kindly housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax, the snooty Lady Ingram and the furtive madwoman in the tower. Eleven-year-old Meghan Pratt is appealing as young Jane and Adèle, Rochester’s French ward, and Grayson DeJesus creates nice variants of three miscellaneous relatives.
Marie-France Arcilla gives a supercilious flounce to the vacuous Blanche, Rochester’s supposed intended, but her performance of the creepy servant Grace Poole is clichéd and furnished with, of all things, an Irish accent. While Sadler brings her native-born English accent, no one comes close to the Yorkshire cadence of the book’s locale, and most of the supporting cast either approximate BBC English or follow Arcilla into bad attempts at bog-Irish.
At just over two hours, this Jane Eyre provides a handy summary of the beloved book, and there are effective moments in Williamson’s rendition, but this critic was never lured into its spooky spell or tortured passions. (Chris Rohmann)

The Orange County Register features the preparations for a local production of Jane Eyre. The Musical.

Period movement, voice, dialect and even corset training are part of Gabrielle Adner’s preparation for the lead role in Cal State Fullerton’s production of “Jane Eyre: The Musical,” opening March 13 at the Little Theatre.
Donning a long skirt, long-sleeve blouse and corset Monday through Friday, from 7-10 p.m., Adner was initially worried the corset would hinder her ability to sing. But, after a period of adjustment that included switching her meal times, she was surprised to find that the costume aligned her posture in a positive way.
“Corset training has actually helped my vocal technique,” says Adner, a theater major who will portray Charlotte Brontë’s classic heroine. “My breathing comes from a different place, and when I sing, I feel more supported.”
To keep her voice healthy, Adner has been keeping to a strict regimen of increasing her water intake, taking vitamins, going to sleep by 11 p.m., minimizing the amount she talks during the day, avoiding caffeinated drinks, and not eating tomatoes or other acidic foods.
In addition to the daily three-hour rehearsals, Adner has invested hours of outside time preparing for the role — reading the libretto and book, listening to the musical score, memorizing lines, working on character development and even watching a documentary on the Brontë sisters.
“Being the lead of the musical can be emotionally and physically exhausting,” she says.
When she feels worried or anxious about the performance, Adner tries to remember positive moments in rehearsal and turns to her peers for support. “I try to calm myself by thinking about what I can do to make myself the best Jane Eyre I can be.”
Sixty students and faculty members are involved in the production, which began in November, on everything from the cast to costume, hair, makeup, lighting, sound, scenery and property design.
James Taulli, director and dean emeritus of the College of the Arts, says students are gaining classical training as the musical follows Eyre’s journey from a student at Lowood School to governess at Thornfield Hall. [...]
Theater major Enrique Duenas has been cast as Edward Fairfax Rochester, master of Thornfield Hall and Eyre’s love interest.
“I am really intrigued by dark, mysterious characters like Mr. Rochester,” he says. “I feel like they have so many layers.”

The Wesleyan Argus discusses the literary canon:

Across the 1990s, a long war was waged over whether or not university and high school English departments should continue to hold a specified canon of literature above the rest. Not only was the canon—which included the likes of Shelley, Blake, Johnson, Coleridge, Melville, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Joyce, Faulkner, Nabakov, Pynchon,Tolstoy, Dante, Homer, Goethe, etc.—exclusively white, exclusively dead, and exclusively male with the exceptions of Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, it was not clear that such a canon truly represented the acme of all literary accomplishment, or even what such an acme should mean. Is it not curious that such an emphasis was put on Renaissance plays, Romantic poetry, and the early novel? And so we attempted to level the playing field, but I would contend that we did not succeed. Really, the decline of the canon was a recentering of educated discourse from literature to politics. (Tom Hanes)

Florida State University reports on the latest talks by members of its staff:

Judith Pascoe, Ph.D. (English) gave a talk “Wuthering Heights, World Literature, and Japanese Child Readers” at Meiji University Dec. 10 and at the University of Tokyo Feb. 6. She was also one of four speakers at Tokyo Humanities Cafe Jan. 9, which aims to bring together humanities researchers in Tokyo and make their research visible to an international, non-specialist audience. (Anna Prentiss)

Les Échos (France) has an article on 'Flaubert, Madame Bovary and coronavirus.

Comme toujours, une évolution souhaitable passe d'abord par des excès ; c'est le cas ici aussi : on ne doit pas aller jusqu'à penser que Flaubert n'avait pas le droit d'écrire « Madame Bovary ». Ni que Jane Austen ou les soeurs Brontë n'étaient pas légitimes en racontant dans leurs romans les aventures de formidables personnages masculins. Et tant d'autres exemples, en particulier dans le cinéma aujourd'hui. (Jacques Attali) (Translation)

The Australian features Simone de Beauvoir listing the Brontës as early influences. Jornal do Comércio (Brazil) recommends Wuthering Heights as a classic of  'human degradation'.