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 t...