Back in 2016 it’s likely the best 200th-birthday present Charlotte Bronte had was the world premiere performance by Northern Ballet, in Yorkshire, of her intense Gothic drama Jane Eyre. Combining fine dance skills with super storytelling and a score full of treats, specially composed by Philip Feeney and played excitingly live, it’s in the repertoire again this season.
It’s no mean feat to portray in under two hours Jane’s epic journey through a lifetime of tortuous ups and downs of physical and emotional torments and joys, through a life strewn with hardship, rejection, cruel twists of fate, precarious romance and, into the bargain, a fiery inferno. Having a grasp of storyline and characters in advance is a big help, especially as the show opens at a later stage in the plot when, ill and exhausted, Jane is rescued by St John Rivers and his sisters. Now, from a raised level at the back of the stage, she looks back over her life from childhood, her younger self (Alessandra Bramante) dancing before her until Amber Lewis takes over again later.
Costume fabrics and set are mainly in subdued, earthy tones, long, moorland-streaked curtains and backcloth creating a drab, desolate atmosphere as backdrop to Jane’s life. The curtains are retained for interiors with scant props added – period chairs, dust-cloth, candles, saddle, crop, wedding veil. When the fiery inferno of flaming red and orange rages it’s in brilliant contrast. Certain characters with key roles also stand out colour-wise: Mr Rochester’s ward, the springing, bouncing, exuberant Adele (danced with childlike joy by Rachael Gillespie) is in pink, while elegant, calculating beauty, Blanche Ingram, sets out to captivate Mr Rochester in dusky lilac, Kaho Masumoto’s flowing dance a real delight. The secretly incarcerated, demented Bertha, with wild hair and bare feet, wears a red, tattered dress, Helen Bogatch and her scary shadow dancing out waving, sinuous, frenetic flows of rage and madness with glorious impact and character. Bringing glimmers of light humour to this dark tale, comes Rochester’s, amiable housekeeper Mrs Fairfax, Harriet Marden much appreciated for her humorous, straight-backed, tippy-toes scuttlings and dippings.
As music styles travel from smooth classical to tracts of spiky, contemporary unease and upheaval, frequent delights ring out in solos and combinations of piano, horn, clarinet, bassoon, oboe, strings and shimmering gong, all working closely with the story and with Cathy Marston’s choreography to reflect extensively the anguish and frustration of Jane and Rochester, beset as they are by the trials and tribulations in Bronte’s tale. A whole lot of spiky, agitated dance results, while at Lowood School synchronised, mechanised movements tell the story. Dance in more tender flow is reserved for special times in Jane’s life as when she dances with her first real friend, the dying Helen Burns, danced by Sena Kitano.
Meanwhile, to emphasise how the fate and shape of women’s lives in that era were entirely under the control of men, six tawny-clad male dancers spring forth again and again to push and pull Jane, carry her this way and that, twist her, turn her, upend her and throw her life into confusion as she fights to free herself from them – and eventually succeeds. Amber Lewis dances a gentle Jane to great effect, her softer dance with St John Rivers, when she’s barely conscious, as powerful as her dances full of struggle and spirit. George Liang, overly cold, cruel and aggressive as Rivers, earns no sympathy at all, while Miguel Teixeira is cold, stern and sulky as dark-haired, be-whiskered Rochester. It would be good to see his developing softer side more fully expressed along the way to add stronger chemistry to the relationship, but for all that, the tale is still thoroughly gripping, the ending poignant and the audience very much enchanted.
Eileen Caiger Gray
