drama
‘Jane Eyre was a fast-paced, dynamic retelling of this classic novel’
When the sadistic evangelist, Reverend Brocklehurst (Josh Brooks at his chilling best), colludes with her Aunt to send her to boarding school, Jane is hopeful that she might flourish in an atmosphere of learning and enlightenment, but the reality (based upon Brontë’s own experiences at the Cowan Bridge School) is a routine of barelydeserved punishments, abuse, starvation and premature death amongst girls whose spirits have been broken by their privations. Only with the pious Helen Burns (an all-too believably-consumptive Beth Rogers) and the gentle Miss Temple (a sensitive performance by Rachel Hellier) does Jane learn to understand love and friendship. From this cold, grey world, Jane emerges into the adult world, ‘poor, obscure, plain and little’ and increasingly dependent on her own reserves of strength and common sense. And when she replies to an advertisement for a Governess at the forbidding Thornfield Hall, her life changes forever. As Mrs Fairfax, the Housekeeper of Thornfield, Grace Greaves was bustling and kindly: whether giving servants their orders or attending to Mr Rochester’s whims, Greaves imbued her role with a maturity and sagacity far beyond her years. As Rochester, Jack Coombs showed us a man haunted by a past he had had little control of and desperate to rehabilitate himself through the goodness offered by Jane’s ‘strange, unearthly’ being. There was more to this growling autocrat than cartoonish frowns and curses: Coombs gave us a Rochester racked by torment for the state of his first wife, for the rottenness of the world, and his own part in it. Against the spare and functional set (a multi-purpose wooden scaffold), this Mr Rochester was devoid of the fripperies and romantic, Byronic fantasies of so many filmed adaptations – he was very real, and very wounded. As Jane, Sydney Davies carried the weight of the play on her young shoulders, and in underplaying her status as the ‘lead’, led the audience into the narrowness of her little world, making her worries and anxieties never less than real and heart-wrenching. By turns brittle, loving, brave, frightened,
impulsive and reserved, Davies gave an exceptionally strong performance, making the character accessible and modern without ever losing sight of her historical anchor. In her scenes with Coombs, one could really see why this odd couple seek out each other: no longer just a Brontë wish-fulfillment, as the darkness of the stage (cleverly lit by Matt Reading) threatened to engulf their daily lives, each character seemed to represent the spark of connection needed to forge ahead. Ethan Bareham played St John Rivers - the uptight clergyman who asks for Jane’s hand as more of a business arrangement than a love match - with pinpoint accuracy, and, once again in this production, offered something more three-dimensional and real than the more-easily caricatured and comic creation he could have been. Bareham was well-supported in his scenes by Ellie Pietroni and Olivia Attwood as his well-meaning sisters Diana and Mary, and his proposal scene with Davies showed how deeply this young actor understands the subtextual complexities at the heart of Brontë’s writing. This was a large cast, in which every single face was engaged and every character believable: from the monotonous rigidity of the Lowood girls in their lessons to the vibrancy of the narration team, the effort and attainment from all involved was clear to see. There was particularly strong support from Ben Crossley as the spineless Richard Mason; Beth Ellison as the beautiful, bitchy Blanche Ingram; Amara Humphries (DCPS) as Rochester’s ‘ward’, Adele; and as Bertha Mason - Rochester’s mentally-ill first wife - Lily Talbot was sensational in achieving the right amount of sadness and terror which should be evoked by this pathetic creature. The drama department at DCS is indeed fortunate to have the talents of Rebecca Vines, whose adaptation was lovingly, even fervently sculpted out of Brontë’s original: her ability, not only to coax quite extraordinary performances out of such young actors, but also to mould this adaptation around their strengths, is a huge asset to the department and the School. Brava. L Allington
23 - DECANIAN 2017/18