There is nothing run of the mill about Being Jane Eyre, it is ambitious, powerful, creative, playful, and feels like something you would expect to see on a professional London stage.Charlotte Brontë, played by Lorna Thomson, sits down at her desk to write "the most popular book ever written… except for the Bible" and the ensemble cast of actor musicians jostle around her desperate to bring her story to life. And bring it to life they most certainly do.Dialogue darts between them, songs effortlessly emerge, costume and scene changes weave into the action of the play. Pivotal letters travel in a wave from hand to hand around the stage, a coach of cast members and umbrellas appear to take Jane to a new location.The talented and committed cast, the youngest of whom is only 11 years old, work brilliantly together to create this captivating world. There were so many stand-out performances on stage that it would be impossible to single them out.The story of the Victorian orphan Jane Eyre, as we know, isn’t full of the funnies, and this performance doesn’t hold back from its more harrowing or moving aspects.The 12 measured thwacks with a cane on the hand of Helen Burns almost took my breath away and I had tears in my eyes on more than one occasion. But the staging has such an exquisite lightness of touch that this production feels anything but bleak or sombre.I do hope this is the beginning of the life of Being Jane Eyre, and that other casts and companies will be able to explore its richness in the future. It could almost be a love letter to literature and theatre and deserves to be seen more widely. (Lucy-Anne Holmes)
UK theatre can with some justification be described as having a fixation on classic texts, our stages populate by a steady stream of Dickens and Brontë with a side-helping of Harper Lee and John Steinbeck. The Manchester International Festival is well-resourced and not as subject to commercial pressures as most UK theatre. Without the need to crowd-please shaping decisions, it is able to present an alternative vision in which theatre- makers can take inspiration from the wayward and strange, from neglected oddities and rediscovered gems, cult texts and obscure counter cultural works—or a once-forgotten dystopia from the 1970s that speaks eerily and eloquently to the current moment. (Natasha Tripney)
After reading “Yellowface,” I can imagine the pressure authors face after accepting an advance for the second book. Book tours, book signings, endless public appearances they have to make to stay popular online and on the bookshelves. They have to write the next book, the next and the next. How do they feel when they cannot come up with subject matter, genre, plots, words? What happens when their entire identity becomes embroiled in the work of writing more than several thousand words everyday. Are those who write a single piece of fiction or nonfiction forgotten? But how can we forget Anna Sewell’s “Black Beauty,” Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” or Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”? (Monita Soni)
In “Beware the Woman,” crime fiction virtuoso Megan Abbott rockets the Gothic novel into the 21st century.The genre is a natural for Abbott, whose irresistible, Gothic-tinged psychological thrillers include “The Turnout,” “You Will Know Me” and “Dare Me,” which became a hit Netflix movie.Since its origins in the 18th century, the Gothic tale has often built horror upon the invasion or imprisonment of women’s bodies, their loss of personal autonomy to evil forces — see Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” or Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” for memorable early examples. (Colette Bancroft)
My favourite author and bookOh man. This is too hard. It’s going to have to be a 19th-century doorstop I think. George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain or some Barsetshire one by Anthony Trollope. Sorry if this sounds dry — I love modern literature too.
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