Brontë future

It looks as if some theatre companies have started to look optimistically to the future. The San Diego Union-Tribune shares the future plans of Lamb’s Players, who plan on reopening on October 2nd.

[Lamb’s Producing Artistic Director Robert] Smyth and his team are now using their downtime to plan and develop new shows for future seasons. They include “Jane,” a new adaptation of “Jane Eyre” by David McFadzean (Pam Kragen)

The Stage interviews some theatre workers who exchanged the stage for the NHS front line.

Actor, director and trainee A&E assistant practitioner Dan Avery

[...]

Do you hope to return to working in theatre?

Definitely. Last year was a real blip. I couldn’t devote my time or motivation to my career. It felt good to see people being successful but I was also extremely envious. We’ve been told that hopefully our production of Jane Eyre will return to Cornwall’s Minack Theatre next year and I will play Mr Rochester. (Giverny Masso)

BookRiot has included Wuthering Heights on a list of  '50 must-read love stories'.

As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge – and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.

[This book has its haters, but it contains one of the best love stories in all of English literature. If I were stranded on a desert island, THIS is the book I would take with me.] (Namera Tanjeem)

Cultured Vultures recommends The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë by Syrie James.

As a fan of classic novels, I love it when authors of today use these novels as inspiration to craft credible love stories of their own. Syrie James is really one of the top-notch authors in this particular genre, having done one based on Mina Harker’s character from Dracula, and a few Jane Austen ones as well.

However, this book is my favourite of hers. I am well aware that Charlotte Brontë would never have left behind a secret diary, and that this is more fiction than fact (something you should be aware of while reading), but after reading Brontë’s novels so many times, it’s nice to read something adjacent to that, which can still inspire similar sentiments. We follow the fictional Charlotte as she journals about the scandalous secret passion for the man she can never have, and her relationship with Arthur Bell Nicholls (whom Brontë married in real life).

Also, who knew brushing hair could be so intimate and swoon-worthy? (Natasha Alvar)

HeadStuff reviews the novel The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

I struggled with the early chapters of The Nickel Boys. I felt I’d read it before. It reminded me of early chapters in Jane Eyre, when the child is damned to a regime of abuse in a reform school created and run by authority figures who use physical violence and the violence of neglect as a chastisement for the child’s own good. (Dave Duggan)

Reviewing Netflix's six-episode thriller Behind Her Eyes, The Hollywood Reporter says that,

There's a delicate line that so much of the best gothic and neo-gothic fiction walks, one where the supernatural seems just around every corner, as literal or metaphorical as you want it to be. There are interpretations of Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre that bring in all manner of unexplainable phenomena, not that any of that is there in literal readings. (Daniel Fienberg)