When I worked as a filing clerk, every afternoon I took armfuls of buff folders down to the basement. I’d shelve the files quick as I could, then pull out a stocky edition of Jane Eyre and furtively read another chapter. I was enraptured – especially by the stubbornly resilient heroine and her ardent rebuttal of injustice: “You think I have no feelings and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness, but I cannot live so – and you have no pity!” Reader, I loved it.
Did choreographer Cathy Marston devour Charlotte Brontë’s novel in a basement? Her 2016 version for Northern Ballet certainly feels devoted to its source material. Marston is noted for narrative ballets, often based on big-beast novels: Wuthering Heights, A Tale of Two Cities. Grand passions translate happily to ballet – jostling incident less easily.
This production’s Jane (an excellent, watchful Sarah Chun on opening night) is first seen fleeing her thwarted wedding to Mr Rochester. She falls into flashback – recalling her miserable childhood (orphaned, cruel relatives, harsh school) and arrival at Thornfield Hall as governess to Rochester’s ward. Patrick Kinmouth’s handsome set suggests the moors, all greyscale striations. Jane often feels confined: the design tempts her to make for the hills and keep running.
There’s a lot to pack in, and Marston’s stage is over-stuffed: hearts sink when yet another mob cap or frock coat hoves into view. Thickets of men crowd around Jane, symbolising the obstacles in her path but blunting the tale’s emotional force. Brontë’s Jane is steeped in isolation – here, she barely gets a moment to herself.
Joseph Taylor’s high-hatted, high-handed Rochester sticks out a lordly foot to stop Jane leaving the room. Their pas de deux are arrestingly original, intractable bodies that stubbornly resist fitting together. She struggles out of lifts, he spins haughtily away: they’re wilfully at odds. Later, they fold into each other – but when their wedding collapses, Jane rapidly wheels her hands backwards, longing to roll back time. Only when Rochester’s health and house are both in ruins do his need and her will mesh into harmonious movement.
Philip Feeney’s score has 19th-century echoes, violins sawing like a fretful mind. Martson keeps things moving: Rachael Gillespie gives young Jane a splendidly mutinous glare, and hectoring adults have rigid lines and pointy fingers. At Thornfield, Heather Lehan enjoys the fussbudget housekeeper, while Gemma Coutts lets rip as Bertha, Rochester’s firestarter of a wife, disrupting the wedding with sharp teeth and legs akimbo.
Marston smartly juxtaposes Jane with Bertha’s looming silhouette, creating an implicit kinship between reserved governess and madwoman in the attic. Each is combustible with pent-up emotion – and Marston’s ballet scores when it burns with the same untameable fire.
