'Reader, they’ve narrated it'

Hartford Courant reviews the Harford Stage production of Jane Eyre.

For those who have read Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel or seen some of its many other stage, film or TV adaptations, there’s little to argue about. Williamson — who not only scripted this “Jane Eyre” but directs it — is profoundly respectful of the source material. Yes, she streamlines the plot by rendering Jane’s childhood mostly in short flashbacks rather than the 10 or so chapters it takes up in the book. [...]
But Williamson is deeply faithful to Brontë's reserved tone of wistful reflection, pushing the sense of a mature Jane looking past on her youthful adventures. [...]
The steadiness of the storytelling means that the adventurous aspects of the story are tempered. A raging fire is depicted with puffs of smoke. A fraught trip through the woods at night is done without wagons or horses or sound effects. Nick Vaughan’s scenic design consists of big dark wooden sliding doors, which are used for a few cool scene-changing effects early in the show but underused at other times. Similarly, there’s some clever use of shadow screens early on, then they go away. It’s all rather straightforward. The story may be shocking, but the staging is not. It’s leisurely, literary, acting out a story as it’s being told.
The show’s eight actors respond to this stylistic challenge in different ways.
For Helen Sadler as Jane, it’s about maintaining her composure, and her authority as the teller of her own story. She gets caught up in calamities, disasters and confusions, but never really freaks out as she might if she weren’t in charge of setting the tone of the whole play. Sadler’s Jane is lithe, vulnerable yet clear-headed. When she is troubled, her mental state is magnified by having her strip off her gray dress and fret in her petticoats.
It falls to Chandler Williams, who plays Jane’s cryptic, attractive, insouciant employer Mr. Rochester, to provide most of the physical thrills and spills. Williams, who used a profusion of pratfalls, silly walks and wild-eyed expressions to become Bertie Wooster in the P.G. Wodehouse adaptation “Perfect Nonsense” at Hartford Stage last year, dials it down considerably here, but still gets a lot of laughs by limping, stretching, sprawling on the floor and otherwise loosening up the talky drama. His manner, his voice and his self-aware handsomeness come off as pure Colin Firth, though Williams goes even further (Firther?) in making Rochester a self-deprecating, effortlessly charming and classy gentleman. (...)
Without Chandler Williams’ whimsical restlessness, Felicity Jones Latta’s crazed incursions, and Ilona Somogyi’s colorful costumes, this “Jane Eyre” would seem way talkier than it already does. The wordiness is not a bad thing: the witty lines get big laughs. Jane’s journey from one household to another never gets confusing. Romance not only builds but is artfully described. The liveliness of Helen Sadler’s portrayal of Jane may be limited by her speechifying, but that’s not a diss: she’s a most articulate, charming and level-headed tale-spinner, who acts like she’s lived this life, relaxed a bit, and is relating it from a less hurried, excitable perspective.
What this “Jane Eyre” lacks in flash and action, it makes up for in studied, nonchalant storytelling. Reader, they’ve narrated it. (Christopher Arnott)

Northern Soul features one of the current contemporary art exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Calling all Brontë fans.
Textile artist Lindsey Tyson and sonic artist and composer Sarah Dew present a visual, tactile and audio exhibition that explores the emotional importance of place in Anne Brontë’s life.
These Scarborough-based artists were commissioned by the The Brontë Parsonage Museum to create a series of works drawing on Anne’s relationship with Scarborough and Haworth, and her journeys between these two places. (Helen Nugent)

The article includes a slideshow.

El País (Spain) reviews the Spanish translation of Isabel Greenberg's Glass Town.

Las pugnas entre ellos por el desarrollo de las vidas de sus personajes de ficción (Zamorna, Quashia, Zenobia…) abrirán una brecha entre los hermanos, que se bifurcan en dos bandos creativos: Charlotte y Branwell continuarán con las riendas de Angria, mientras que Emily y Ann crearán una isla de ficción llamada Gondal. Finalmente todo el espacio quedará en manos de Charlotte, erigida en el eje central de este cómic y única superviviente del clan en 1849, punto de arranque de la historia. Una Charlotte obsesionada con la fantasía de Angria, donde la vida podía discurrir con menos limitaciones que las impuestas por la realidad del siglo XIX a una mujer con mucho más talento que dinero como era su caso. El cómic de Greenberg explora esa frontera entre lo que es y lo que podría ser, también la seducción que puede despertar la imaginación en los espíritus inconformistas. La ciudad de cristal fue la claraboya de las Brontë para huir de la realidad. Sin ella probablemente no habrían existido Agnes Gray, Jane Eyre o Cumbres borrascosas. (Tereixa Constenla) (Translation)

Jezebel recommends Rachel Vorona Cote’s debut non-fiction book, Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today.

Academically trained, Vorona Cote’s Too Much is a meticulous close-reading of texts from the Brontë sisters to Jane Eyre’s madwoman Bertha Mason to Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” to the works of theorist Michel Foucault, whose ideas she renders accessible. Though rooted in studies of Victorian literature, Vorona Cote’s line of inquiry extends far beyond. Through careful consideration of Britney Spears, Amber Rose, Lana Del Rey, Madonna, TLC, and many others, Vorona Cote illuminates the harms that befall women who are corseted by the label of “too much.” (Jacqueline Alnes)

The Film Stage reviews the Brazilian film Todos os mortos:

There are echoes of Chekhov’s family units here, especially The Cherry Orchard, and I was also reminded of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre in Bianchi’s spirited but fragile Ana, cooped up in a gated mansion not unlike a city-center version of Thornfield Hall. Men are conspicuously absent here. (Ed Frankl)