Like the source material, this review of Jane Eyre the musical is a story of growth and redemption.
I’ve seen almost every iteration of the Caird/Gordon adaption, including the original headed by Marla Schaffel and James Barbour, the Theatre Raleigh staging starring Julie Benko and Matthew Bogart, and more recently the Manhattan Concert Production feautirng Erika Henningsen and Ramin Karimloo. Each version was an edit on the original Broadway production, and each improved on the one before it, but I was increasingly frustrated that this merger of my two great loves (Jane Eyre and musical theatre) consistently failed to move me. Something always got in the way: If the long show time and my ambivalence about Marla Schaffel’s performance didn’t spoil the original, then the sexual abuser who originated the role of Rochester most certainly did. I enjoyed Julie Benko’s turn as Jane in the stripped-down Theatre Raleigh production, but the quaint staging didn’t capture the soul of the text. I took more heart from the one-night manhattan concert production last February, which offered perhaps the best pairing of Jane and Rochester in Erika Henningsen and Ramin Karimloo, as well as changes to the blocking and choreography that hinted at inspiration from Sally Cookson’s adaptation. But as I traipsed through the snow from Lincoln Center following the show, I wondered if I would ever truly enjoy this musical adaptation.
Curtain call at Manhattan Concert Production’s staging of Jane Eyre at Lincoln Center
So when I purchased a ticket for the newest reworked version at the Southwark Playhouse during my trip to London, I admit I wasn’t expecting much. I was familiar with Ashley Gilmour (Rochester) and Eve Shanu-Wilson (Blanche) from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, where I loved both their takes on their respective characters. I was also aware that Charlie Burn’s powerful lungs were well suited to Jane, even if she is decidedly too conventionally attractive for the role (a complain I’ll return to later). Otherwise, I didn’t know what to expect from yet another edited go at this musical.
I’m glad I took the chance, because this intimate, black-box style reworking of Jane Eyre was the best version of the musical I’ve seen. Under new director Megan McGinnis, Jane Eyre: The Musical proves that less is indeed more with this story. Yes, there is “less”—less cast members, less music from the original, less theatre to fill. It’s easy to dismiss these changes as mere cost-saving measures, but what results is a highly focused, intimate take on the novel that keeps the audience locked in. Shorn of all frills, the show highlights what matters: the musical and lyrical depth of songs like “forgiveness” and “painting her portrait,” the nuanced performances by the revolving cast, and most importantly Jane herself.
Vocally, Charlie Burn is a revelation, discovering the edge and angst in John Caird and Paul Gordon’s music that I’d begun to doubt existed. What I thought were plaintiff, even boring tunes transform under her vocal command. “Sweet Liberty”—always a little too optimistic of an “I want” song for my taste—becomes a manifesto conveyed by the sheer power of her voice and her restless vibrato. “Painting her portrait,” the show’s enduring musical highpoint, is lent extra gravitas by her growl. Burn’s Jane is just like her voice: it demands free range, but is trapped by the confines of her status, poverty, and the limited landscape of a tiny theater. With no other outlet, Burn vents her mounting rage and frustration upon herself in “Painting her Portrait” in a magnetic performance. And when she finally turns that indignation onto Rochester, the line “I cry because the pain, because the grief is quickly turning to rage” finally feels real.
Burn’s performance could easily be overpowering if not for her spoken lines. In song, she is bursting at the seams like a modern woman, but in dialogue she portrays the more observant, controlled veneer that comes across in the source material. The small size of the theatre allows the performers to dial back and manipulate pauses, convey micro expressions without alienating the audience.
Ashley Gilmour steps into his turn as the byronic hero with a heavy cross to bear: His own insanely good looks, his history as the “handsome hero,” and the fact that he’s a tenor. (How can he and Burn call each other “plain” and “ugly” with a straight face when they’re both the epitome of gorgeous?) However much I was rooting for him, I can’t claim that he overcomes these obstacles. Even bearded and bedecked in black, Gilmour gave more Austenian love interest than a brooding Brontë leading man. In the intimate space of the theatre, I was waiting for him to let loose and convince me that he was ugly, hardened by multiple betrayals, and yet still desperate for love the way book Rochester is. But Gilmour did not appear particularly tortured by his life choices (“remorse is the poison of life”) nor driven by any urgent need for redemption. I spent the majority of the show unconvinced that Rochester’s entire life and happiness were at stake. And yet for all my criticisms, Gilmour still tugs at the requisite heartstrings, especially in the final scene where Rochester holds his firstborn child and discovers the humility that he previously lacked when he was proud, rich, and inaccurately handsome.
It’s also hard to deny the natural chemistry between Burn and Gilmour, even if it is hindered by the new blocking at points. For a book that describes its two lovers as drawn together by an invisible string, I was struck by how little Jane and Rochester actually touch in this production—especially during the proposal. Despite the centrality of hands in the book, actual hand contact is in short supply in this adaptation. The contained blocking does the most disservice to Gilmour’s Rochester. It’s hard to convey the character’s desperate striving when Rochester rarely pursues or reaches for Jane; more often Gilmour is left standing and singing with as much intensity as he can muster, which can only do so much.
Other diehard fans of the book and previous musicals will also remark on the shortened length, which sacrifices most of the original production’s humor. Comical numbers like “Slip of a Girl” and the hilarious line from “he has eight or nine of the seven deadly sins” are cut, leaving only a few funny moments in the show that the audience isn’t well-primed to receive.
Despite these bones to pick, Caird and McGinnis’s turn at Jane Eyre was deeply moving, powered by the beauty of the performances and aided immeasurably by Morgan Large’s staging and costume design. The monochrome Black costuming is a multilayed visual feast. Different details and articles of clothing come off and on throughout the show, reflecting different characters as well as social and emotional contexts. As in Autumn de Wilde’s Emma, Jane and Rochester gradually reveal themselves, discarding bodices and cravats to bare shoulders, chest, forearms as they become more vulnerable with each other. I can already imagine eyes rolling as I mention the large LED screen that provides the backdrop for the set, and yet it never robs attention from the performances. It only adds the most necessary visual cues to the setting. And the book’s hallmark quote, “I am no bird,” which serves as the staging’s informal proscenium, visually evokes the fact that the production lives inside the text itself. If the set is sparse, it’s because Jane Eyre: The Musical mimics the unfinished, piecemeal perspective of the reader’s imagination.
Is this production perfect? No. Eyreheads looking for a complete transliteration of the text can continue to return to the 1973 and 1983 BBC miniserials. Theatre adaptations aren’t built to be book-to-screen copy and pastes.
But this go at Jane Eyre: The Musical did what none of its predecessors managed to accomplish. It made me fall in love with Caird and Gordon’s music, and it finally wedded that music to the emotional core of the source material to establish staying power. For the first time, I found myself possessed by the score, even humming tunes and singing lines from the musical long after I left the theatre. The cast and creative team should feel proud of the labor of love they’ve undertaken with this production. And this interpretation of the show should absolutely have a life beyond its short run at Southwark Playhouse.
Curtain call, Jane Eyre: The Musical at Southwark Playhouse
