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Adapted for the stage by Carole Ransom from the novel by Charlotte Brontё
Performed by St John’s Players and directed by Carole Ransom and Andrew Clark
Reviewed by Julie Petrucci

This famous nineteenth-century classic tale has been adapted for the stage by several authors but with the tag line of “an autobiography” I was not quite expecting the full story of Jane’s romance with Rochester, her failed marriage, her inheritance and then her reunion with her old employer.  I think I was maybe expecting to find out a bit about Jane Eyre herself.  Her life before she came to Thornfield Hall etc.  What we had here was a play of the book with very little, if anything, left out.

There were a good many positives in this production.  The superb set depicting Thornfield Hall, the costumes and sound effects plus an excellent lighting design by Graham Royston.  However the whole evening was over-long at three hours plus.  Much could have been done to alleviate this.  The pace of dialogue and the interminable scene and costume changes could have been slicker and the script would have benefited from some judicious pruning.  A tremendous amount of work had obviously gone into the production there was some good acting with great attention paid to detail but it suffered from large gaps where the audience sat talking amongst themselves waiting for the next scene and therefore breaking the atmosphere the actors were working hard to create.

Louise Edwards in the lead role was excellent although in the first act she unfortunately caught the slow, deliberate delivery of Rochester (Andrew Clark).  Jane’s character came over much better in act two in her lovely scenes with the Rivers family and her return to Thornfield Hall.  A fine performance.  Prue Harrison as Mrs Fairfax was excellent as was young Deborah Tun as Jane’s pupil Adèle – a good confident performance by a young actress to watch out for.  I particularly liked Shannon Hogan as both Blanche Ingram and Mary Rivers: she managed to create two different characters extremely well. There were also some excellent and well-defined cameo performances by Joy Griggs (Lady Ingram) Kathy Cutmore (Hannah) and Bernadette Battom (Rosamond Oliver).  In fact all fourteen actors did a grand job.

This was a huge undertaking by Carole Ransom and it was no mean feat to adapt such a famous novel.  However transferring something like this to the stage and making it work is obviously harder than it looks.  Full marks though to the cast and technical team of St John’s Players for helping to bring Carole’s efforts to fruition.