'Jane Eyre' review — yearning chemistry and emotive singing in this musical adaptation of a classic

Read our review of Jane Eyre, starring Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour, now in performances at Southwark Playhouse to 24 October.

Summary

• Musical Jane Eyre has its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse
• Original director John Caird co-directs with Megan McGinnis
• Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour share convincingly yearning chemistry as Jane and Mr Rochester

Charlotte Brontë’s 1848 autobiographical/wish fulfilment novel Jane Eyre is a favourite book of many (including this reviewer) that’s often read at a transitional age. With its fervent emotions, passionate love story, and gothic melodrama, it’s in many ways ripe for musical theatre treatment with emotional ballads and sweeping duets.

Paul Gordon and John Caird’s adaptation premiered in Toronto in 1996 and on Broadway in 2000 (where it received five Tony nominations) and has been revised several times since as a chamber production. This latest version, helmed by original director Caird (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby), with Megan McGinnis (who starred in Gordon's Daddy Long Legs), marks its professional UK premiere. As an adaptation, it's a sincere effort, even if it’s inevitable that it prioritises the emotional over the intellectual, rather than blending both together.

The opening scenes, charting young Jane’s (Emily-Rose Samuel, an excellent physical match for Charlie Burn as her adult counterpart – she also doubles as the flouncy Adele) upbringing with her horrible Reed relations before being packed off the miserable Lowood boarding school are something of a trial to dramatise, despite their narrative power. Gordon and Caird attempt to integrate the religious fervour that runs through the text, exemplified by child martyr Helen Burns (Isabelle Methven).

The music, which is appealingly sung by the ensemble, soars and harmonises nicely, though the songs have a tendency to blend together and the lyrics can’t resist didacticism. It reaches a climax in Jane’s second-act solo “Painting Her Portrait”, which is a powerful song of ideas. Andrew Johnson provides a clean sound design and the seven-piece band, led by Ben Kubiak, is ideally balanced.

As Jane and Edward Fairfax Rochester, Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour are an appealing pair who share a convincingly yearning chemistry. Unlike their characters, both are conventionally attractive (as is so often the case in adaptations). Burn's Jane feels closer to Belle in Beauty and the Beast than to Brontë's fey, fiery misfit, but she’s a heroine worth rooting for.

Gilmour also doesn’t appear to be much older than Burn. However, they both provide emotive singing and charismatic performances. The emphasis is on their shared growth in self-knowledge through exploring their feelings for each other, even if we could do with one or two fewer angsty ballads.

Poor Bertha (Hannah Lindsey) merely has a cameo in which she’s treated like an animal and then quickly sedated (in contrast, productions by Shared Experience and Sally Cookson’s version for Bristol Old Vic and the National Theatre made her an integral part of the action). There isn't much in the way of revisionism here, though a straight adaptation is actually something of a novelty these days.

Caird and McGinnis’s staging doesn’t fully play up to the story’s full dramatic and visual weight. The crucial scene in which Jane rescues Rochester from the bedroom fire has minimal impact. There's also little sense of the Yorkshire setting. Designer Morgan Large's monochrome set design, featuring Jane's "I am no bird" speech, has a backdrop of brooding projections that get lost. The costuming, comprising stylised black gothic outfits, is reminiscent of a Halloween-themed revue (when Jane is uncloaked, she reveals a distinctly un-governessy off-the-shoulder corset top).

The first act anticlimactically culminates with Jane and Rochester admitting their feelings to themselves; the fortune teller scene, proposal, wedding, and its aftermath all come in the second half. Evangelical clergyman St John Rivers (Melad Hamidi) is dealt with swiftly and the convoluted “We are actually cousins” business is eliminated, as is the legacy from the long-lost uncle in Madeira.

As with most adaptations of classic literature, it’s best enjoyed for what it is, rather than fixating on its shortcomings (even if that can be part of the fun). The book will always be there. Reader, I probably wouldn’t marry this show, but I'd go on a date with it.

Jane Eyre is at Southwark Playhouse to 24 October. Book Jane Eyre tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Jane Eyre (Photos by Victoria Davies)