Tag Archives: Danielle Pearson

Jane Eyre – 4 Stars

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Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre

Watermill Theatre

Reviewed – 30th October 2018

★★★★

“This is both a story of 1847 and one of today”

 

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is the eponymous and block-busting mid-19th century romantic novel. First published in three volumes, its narrator, ‘plain Jane’ describes her childhood in the home of an abusive aunt, her punitive schooling, and her employment as governess to the ward of Mr Rochester at the gloomy Thornfield Hall. Rochester, of course, has a dark secret locked up in his attic. Jane Eyre is a story about confinement, mastery and love. For Rochester, Jane is ‘unfemale’, ‘a wild, frantic bird’ to be caged. But she is ‘no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will’.

This is both a story of 1847 and one of today. Newbury’s Watermill has translated the classic and pioneering novel into a seventy minute show that runs without interval, and that is followed, from Tuesday to Friday, by an interesting question and answer session. 

Adaptor Danielle Pearson explained how almost half of her text was cut away about a week before the show opened, enabling her to create a taut and vibrant adaptation that remains truthful to the novel. Director Chloe France stripped away set too, and the show takes place with the back wall of the theatre visible and just a few simple wooden boxes on stage. Costumes are traditional and appropriate.

Just three actors were cast. Rebecca Tebbett has a luminous quality as Jane, and thoroughly inhabits the Yorkshire in which the action takes place. Wreh-Asha Walton has by far the most difficult task, taking on seven roles (plus Rochester’s dog). Interestingly, she portrays Rochester’s wife Bertha as a Caribbean woman, using some folk-dance inspired moves in a performance imbued with impressive power and authority. 2018 Stage Debut Award winner Alex Wilson has just the right amount of arrogant authority as Rochester. In one demanding and fast-moving scene he switches repeatedly from the role of Rochester to St John Rivers, Jane’s cousin, highlighting the dilemma that faces Jane as she chooses between going to India and returning to Rochester.

By stripping away so much that would be superfluous, this clever stage adaptation focuses on the power and poetry of Charlotte Brontë’s words, with some engaging performances from an impressive young cast. Not a moment is wasted.

You will have to be quick to catch this satisfying and thought-provoking show which closes on November 2.

 

Reviewed by David Woodward

Photography by Philip Tull

 


Jane Eyre

Watermill Theatre until 2nd November

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Teddy | ★★★★★ | January 2018
The Rivals | ★★★★★ | March 2018
Burke & Hare | ★★★★ | April 2018
A Midsummer Night’s Dream | ★★★★ | May 2018
Jerusalem | ★★★★★ | June 2018
Trial by Laughter | ★★★★ | September 2018

 

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This Restless State – 3 Stars

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Restless

This Restless State

Ovalhouse

Reviewed – 16th March 2018

★★★

“the tameness of the script fails to relate the depth of distress”

 

Centred in the present, ‘This Restless State’ steps back to the past and forward to the future to explore the idea of our attachment to and recognition of home, in an intertwining of three singular predicaments. The writer, Danielle Pearson, motivated by the Brexit vote, which fuelled a debate in many minds, aims to question the spirit of national identity and the conflict between political beliefs and personal feelings and how this alters from one generation to another. She also discusses the tensions between freedom and responsibility as we shape the future we want or accept what is happening.

Jesse Fox gives a touchingly honest performance in this one-man feat as he endears the audience with ‘his’ story. Struggling to make sense of the path he is taking in life, he has also to confront his own reaction when he returns to the family home for the last time. He intersperses his account with the narratives of two others – Margot in Berlin, 1989, whose world stops as she learns of the fall of the wall, and Galina in Rome, 2052 – devastated by an Inter-Continental war – preparing to vote in a Europe-wide referendum. He sensitively moves from one character to the other, building a defined quality to each situation.

Director, Jemima James, subtly guides us round the piece as the threads of the stories interlace, while the sound design by Ella Wahlström is strikingly evocative, bathing the stage with language and music. Ben Pacey’s unpretentious set creates a simple, homely atmosphere and his lighting daubs the different eras in their distinctive tones and effectively punctuates the changes of scene. Any moments of drama are created artificially by the expertise of the technical effects.

In making ‘This Restless State’ theatrical conversation or storytelling, our engagement with Margot and Galina, whose lives are portrayed, is not as strong as with Jesse who is recounting his own; the performance, therefore, becomes dynamically unbalanced and, in addition, the thought-provoking topics the play purports to raise are only touched on. The concept of the work is original and the linking elements are apparent but, although each is a poignant comment on the contrariety of our emotions, the tameness of the script fails to relate the depth of distress and it comes across as three wistful, intimate sketches.

 

Reviewed by Joanna Hetherington 

 


This Restless State

Ovalhouse until 24th March

 

 

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