Emily Brontë's 'punkish' spirit

Journal Inquirer reviews Hartford Stage's production of Jane Eyre.

Creating a stage adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” has been a passion project for Hartford Stage’s Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson. With the final product now on stage, adapted and directed by Williamson, it is evident that her efforts and dedication to it have paid off.
This is the best piece of theater that Williamson has directed at Hartford Stage. [...]
The early end of the first act feels rushed at times as Williamson tries to establish the relationships as quickly as possible to get to the root of the narrative. But once the relationship between Jane and Mr. Rochester is established, the play settles in and it has a natural flow. The pacing and flow of the second act is engaging and packed with tension.
Williamson’s staging works with simplicity with the minimalist scenic design by Nick Vaughan. There is little set to speak of, just a few benches, a desk, an upright piano, and a few props here and there. Any complexity of the stage comes from the turntable center stage that rotates set pieces behind a flat that opens on both stage left and right as doors to let characters and set pieces enter and exit. [...]
Much praise goes to Sadler, who is maybe offstage but for a few seconds through the entire two hour-plus run time. She gives Jane a delightful curiosity, but also a wary guarded quality about her. She embodies Jane’s educated nature, but also the insecurities of a very young adult out on her own for the first time. It’s a difficult balance to maintain and Sadler does a terrific job maintaining it.
Williams is a delight as the eccentric Mr. Rochester. A couple of times he allowed himself to lose his bearings on what he’s doing onstage, but overall he brilliantly captures the enigmatic nature of a man who is quickly falling in love with Jane, but can’t reveal what secrets he has within his home.
The first thing that pops out at the top of the show, before Sadler says her first lines, is Ilona Somogyi’s costumes, which are phenomenal, gorgeously rich and textured. Amid a richly atmospheric lighting design by Isabella Byrd, Somogyi’s costumes make the actors pop out onstage in a way that is luminous.
Those who are fans of Brontë’s novel should love this adaptation and if you’re coming fresh to the story, it is alive and freshly interpreted for a contemporary audience to embrace. (Tim Leininger)

Broadway World announces that due to the success of the production there is to be one more performance.

In response to popular demand, an additional performance of Jane Eyre, adapted and directed by Hartford Stage Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson, has been scheduled for Thursday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m. The show will close on Saturday, March 14.
Jane Eyre has received rave reviews from audiences and critics alike. Broadway World praised Jane Eyre as "captivating and entertaining...a sweeping narrative delivered by a talented cast and supported by strong technical design."

Coincidentally, The Guardian has a very interesting article on adapting novels to the stage.

Tales by Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter and Emily Brontë are all being brought to theatres this year. Their creative teams reflect on what they cut and what they added [...]
Several formally complex fictions are currently being reimagined on the boards, from Angela Carter’s magical realist short story The Company of Wolves, opening at the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme in May, to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, currently at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. [...]
In any adaptation there is the question of what to include and what to leave out. “A written story, even a short story, has plots and subplots which are very difficult to fit into a single theatrical event,” says Heskins. Andrew Sheridan and Bryony Shanahan agree. They are currently staging a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights and to stay faithful to the spirit of Brontë’s love story between Cathy and Heathcliff they rearranged its chronology, focusing on the first part of the book and changing its narration for greater dramatic effect.
“A literal adaptation wouldn’t work,” says Shanahan, the joint artistic director of the Royal Exchange and director of this production. “We invented ways to tell this story for the stage … but any departures from the book are there to bring us back to its spirit.”
The production captures the book’s anarchic, otherworldly essence with synthetic music in scenes when Cathy and Heathcliff are running along the moors. Live musicians appear on stage and poetry by Brontë and her father, Patrick, has been inserted into the script for added lyricism.
This production, says Shanahan, is less sanitised than previous, romanticised versions that amp up the central passion between Cathy and Heathcliff but gloss over the brutality that runs alongside it in the original text.
Sheridan’s adaptation, by contrast, shows the bond between Cathy (Rakhee Sharma) and Heathcliff (Alex Austin) with all its ferocious and feral edges. The book contains everything from spitting and slapping to the scraping of bloody wrists on window panes, the killing of animals, domestic abuse and shades of sadomasochism and necrophilia. The play does not shy away from these violent elements and comes with a content warning as a result.
Sheridan began working on the adaptation three years ago and read the book more than 20 times. The readings have drawn him close to Brontë and he thought it just as important to capture her “punkish” spirit in his script. “I became quite obsessed with her,” he says. “I felt she was standing over my shoulder. Every time I finished a draft, I fell into a fever … Emily Brontë always felt present.” (Arifa Akbar)

Keighley News has an article on Sally Wainwright.

A visit to the Brontë Parsonage Museum at Haworth as a child has led to a lifelong love of the literary siblings’ work for one award-winning writer.
Sally Wainwright said she’d always retained a fascination with the sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – and their writings.
“I’ve been interested in the Brontës for as long as I can remember,” she said.
“They achieved so much in such little time.
“What’s interesting to a contemporary audience is their domestic situation; three women living with an alcoholic brother and trying to get published. Women at that time lived vicariously through their brothers.
“The Brontë sisters were three geniuses under one roof, women in a male world. I feel so privileged, as a Yorkshire woman, to write about these fabulous Yorkshire women.”
Ms Wainwright wrote and directed To Walk Invisible, a 2016 television film about the Brontë sisters.
It was shot in Haworth and at nearby Penistone Hill, where a meticulously-detailed replica of the family’s parsonage home and surrounding streets and buildings was constructed.
The screening sparked a huge surge in extra visitors to the parsonage, including many local people who hadn’t previously been to the museum.
Staff reported positive feedback from the public about the 90-minute film, which also received universal acclaim.
The museum’s Twitter feed was inundated with rave reviews.
Local councillors also expressed their admiration for To Walk Invisible and spoke of its potential long-term effect on boosting Haworth’s tourist trade. (Alistair Shand)

The Nerd Daily recommends '12 Shorter Classic Novels To Devour' and one of them is

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
Ah yes, a mention of one of the Brontë sisters! This list would be not right without a mention of this short 240 page classic. This one is the smaller of two books written by Anne, and it surely doesn’t disappoint and it is one of my all-time favourites!
Synopsis: Drawing directly on her own unhappy experiences, Anne Brontë‘s first-person narrative describes the almost unbelievable pressures endured by nineteenth-century governesses – the isolation, the frustration, and the insensitive and sometimes cruel treatment meted out by employers and their families. (Louise Nice)

The Oakland Press reviews the film Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.

Most period pieces are based on established and renowned novels, but “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is based on an original screenplay that was also penned by Sciamma. It's an exquisite and ravishing romance that still has the scope of a Jane Eyre or Edith Wharton adaptation. (Robert Butler)

The Sisters' Room features Balthus's Wuthering Heights illustrations.