Jane Eyre

Thanks to the National Theatre, the Covid-19 Lockdown is being ridden out by many enthusiasts at home, with their Live filming of recent productions going out on YouTube. And Charlotte Brontë’s rich tale of a spirited woman’s journey through Victorian hypocrisy and Gothic romance is such an engaging work that it’s up there with the very best television.

Jane (Madeleine Worrel) is seen at birth, and she’s on stage all the time amongst the wooden frames and ladders that comprise the modernist set. She makes the baby crying noises as, elsewhere, her parents love her and yet give her away to her wicked aunt Reed and her awful children. She is bullied and brutalised by all, not least the unpleasantly pious and wicked Mr Brocklehurst (Craig Edwards), a character whose wickedness was so plainly laid out in the novel that someone threatened to sue Brontë at the time of the book’s publication.

Brontë had to assume a male name, of course, and all productions and adaptations of the story have made an effort to take out any pretence of this being anything other than the story of a woman ordering her life on her terms. She ends up at Thornfield Hall, owned by Edward Rochester (Felix Hayes)—meeting him without knowing, when she startles him and he falls off his horse. Amusingly his dog Pilot is played by Craig Edwards. Somehow having a man being a dog is exactly the right level of humour in an otherwise serious production.

This is a joyful adaptation of the novel which doesn’t skip much of the dense storyline. Jane can’t resist Rochester, and although he has a daughter from an affair with a Paris showgirl, and although he has his eyes set on another woman, he is taunted by Jane’s wit and worldliness. There’s also the woman in the attic and the visitor who almost breaks Rochester’s cover. Ultimately, after Jane has confronted her dying aunt and agreed to marry Rochester, things go badly wrong and she walks out on him. This is the opposite of what a woman was expected to do in the patriarchal Victorian era, and somehow it’s still a potent act of defiance. Rochester (Felix Heyes) is presented here as a man who’s on the run even in his own house. Jane’s reserve and Rochester’s elusiveness make it difficult to demonstrate affection between these two characters but somehow it comes together in this production, and that’s incredible because—like the conjuring trick in the opening scene—it’s not clear how it’s done. Madeleine Worrel is instantly likeable as a child and grows with a focused strength, as you might imagine Jane doing in Brontë’s fantastical world which is, to Jane, mostly unknown. 

Most productions have made Jane quite posh and southern, or otherwise a fantastical kind of woman and not a down-to-Earth person who rails at the unfairness that’s levelled at her. Television adaptations have time to go into depth with the story but there hasn’t been a satisfying film adaptation. Orson Welles was not a great Rochester in the most highly regarded film; and Michael Fassbender didn’t work either in a more recent version that took a knife to the book—and neither focuses on the title character sufficiently. This is a dynamic and musically rich production which really brings the story out of it’s school set text reputation and provides a solid three hours of entertainment that’s worth staying in for.

Watch the Play here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO0CXV0zEAQ