Post by duncan on May 20, 2017 23:28:04 GMT
20 - Jane Eyre - Festival
Jane Eyre - orphan, wicked aunt, horrid school, death of friend, becomes a teacher, meets Mr Rochester, falls in love, mad woman in the attic, religious fervour, alls well that ends well.
Looking at the programme there are 15 weeks of this tour left before it reaches the National, and dear god during parts of this show did it feel like I was sitting in all productions over the next 15 weeks. A bum numbing 3hours 10 minute run time this evening - and this is the cut down version!
This isn't bad but on the other hand its not actually that good as a coherent production. The first half hour or so is terrible, its turgidly dull stuff with a very unlikeable lead character - I know that Jane is in trouble and her life is crap but we should feel sorry for her and yet because we don't get into the head of Jane until after she has attacked someone we don't care that she has bitten her cousin and struck him. The cousin may be a complete Tw*t and be fully deserving of his punishment but there is no pre-development of that plot strand in the play so Jane just comes across as a hot headed unlikeable prat. In an odd casting choice, the nasty cousin is played by Tim Delap who is also playing Rochester which brings a whole new level of wrongness to their later relationship.
Risible performances abound in this first section as the cast decide to EN-UNC-IA-TE everything as if they have suddenly learnt a new language and aren't sure what they are doing and just as I was losing the will to live suddenly it clicked into gear and things picked up as we headed to the interval. The cast settled down, the script became tighter and had more impact and started to draw me in.
Come the second half and things were rollicking along nicely as we got to the nitty gritty of the story and the cast seemed a lot more comfortable with what they were doing, a special shout out to Paul Mundell for his wonderful performance as Pilot which raised plenty of laughs from the audience.
The set is on three levels - the main stage, a platform above the main stage and then a walkway at the rear of the set and there are ladders, steps and ramps linking the areas. The cast are required to climb and hang off ladders whilst putting in a performance and as noted above it works after a while.
A grudging 6/10, turn up at 8pm and it'd probably be higher but that meandering first part is off putting.
Jane Eyre - orphan, wicked aunt, horrid school, death of friend, becomes a teacher, meets Mr Rochester, falls in love, mad woman in the attic, religious fervour, alls well that ends well.
Looking at the programme there are 15 weeks of this tour left before it reaches the National, and dear god during parts of this show did it feel like I was sitting in all productions over the next 15 weeks. A bum numbing 3hours 10 minute run time this evening - and this is the cut down version!
This isn't bad but on the other hand its not actually that good as a coherent production. The first half hour or so is terrible, its turgidly dull stuff with a very unlikeable lead character - I know that Jane is in trouble and her life is crap but we should feel sorry for her and yet because we don't get into the head of Jane until after she has attacked someone we don't care that she has bitten her cousin and struck him. The cousin may be a complete Tw*t and be fully deserving of his punishment but there is no pre-development of that plot strand in the play so Jane just comes across as a hot headed unlikeable prat. In an odd casting choice, the nasty cousin is played by Tim Delap who is also playing Rochester which brings a whole new level of wrongness to their later relationship.
Risible performances abound in this first section as the cast decide to EN-UNC-IA-TE everything as if they have suddenly learnt a new language and aren't sure what they are doing and just as I was losing the will to live suddenly it clicked into gear and things picked up as we headed to the interval. The cast settled down, the script became tighter and had more impact and started to draw me in.
Come the second half and things were rollicking along nicely as we got to the nitty gritty of the story and the cast seemed a lot more comfortable with what they were doing, a special shout out to Paul Mundell for his wonderful performance as Pilot which raised plenty of laughs from the audience.
The set is on three levels - the main stage, a platform above the main stage and then a walkway at the rear of the set and there are ladders, steps and ramps linking the areas. The cast are required to climb and hang off ladders whilst putting in a performance and as noted above it works after a while.
A grudging 6/10, turn up at 8pm and it'd probably be higher but that meandering first part is off putting.
