This is no ordinary literary adaptation: SEANNA VAN HELTEN reviews HARVEST RAIN THEATRE COMPANY’s production of Charlotte Brontë’s 19th-century novel JANE EYRE and there is neither a ripped bodice nor a clipped BBC vowel in sight.

At my all girls’ high school, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and her eponymous heroine were taught as the definitive progenitors of both women’s fiction and modern womanhood. In spite of the story being pure melodrama – “poor, obscure, and plain” girl meets broody hero with a dark marital past hidden in the attic – Jane Eyre remains pertinent as a heroine because of her intelligence, forthright sense of her moral self, and a desire for worldly knowledge.

In an inspired adaptation, British playwright Polly Teale has translated Brontë’s novel into a highly imaginative stage-play without losing any of the story’s charm or power, while bringing to light contemporary questions of its tropes. One important question, as director Joanna Butler writes in her program notes to Harvest Rain Theatre Company’s production of Jane Eyre, is “why did Brontë invent a madwoman to torment her heroine?”

With a literary-critical bent, Teale has responded by fusing the ‘madwoman in the attic’ with a characterised alter ego of Jane; as Rochester locks up his lunatic wife Bertha, so too does the young Jane repress her inner fervour and fury.

The play opens with the child Jane Eyre (Tanya Dougherty) playing with her energetic inner self, Bertha (Kathryn Marquet). Recently orphaned, Jane is emotionally abused by her carers, and sent to a strict boarding school. Learning that if she is to survive her grim circumstances she must restrain her emotional impulses, Jane psychologically abandons Bertha, thus ‘locking up’ a side of her self deemed unacceptable. When she arrives as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Jane strikes up a tumultuous friendship with the brusque master of the house, Mr Rochester (Edward Foy). All the while, Bertha watches from her attic cell, until the sudden revelation of Rochester’s secret past causes a rupture in the burgeoning romance between Jane and her employer.

Supporting the three main protagonists are a solid ensemble cast, including Julie-Anna Evans, Elizabeth Gibney, Jeni Godwin, Cameron Hurry, Kylie Morris, and Leigh Walker, rotating between various character parts. Butler’s direction of the cast is generally strong, although some awkward scene changes seemed to halt the action, which I imagine was written to revolve around Jane rather than as distinct, naturalistic scenes. Josh Mcintosh’s design of Bertha’s attic is aptly claustrophobic and sickly-red, but with the main action firmly planted in the middle of the large stage, the rest of the space felt under-utilised.

Dougherty gives a polished performance as Jane and, as well as looking perfectly the part, gently amplifies Jane’s wit and her noble sense of pride. Dougherty and Foy’s Rochester have a natural on-stage chemistry that makes the romance between the unlikely lovers both genuine and immensely likeable.

The role of Bertha – silenced and confined to a small space – must be extremely challenging for an actor, as it is for a director to realise. Kathryn Marquet’s performance sustained well the energy of a woman gradually reduced to insanity. But I wonder if there is a more interesting way to portray ‘madness’ that is presumably a result of cruelty and captivity, especially when the character also represents the suppressed emotion of a very rational woman.

What is so intriguing about Teale’s adaptation is the psychological implication of effectively splitting Jane’s personality into two parallel figures, both punished by patriarchal society for acting too freely. This is an inspired dramaturgical premise, and one that director Butler has clearly relished in her production – even if the adaptation warrants a more nuanced characterisation of irrationality.

JANE EYRE plays at the Sydney Street Theatre, New Farm until May 31. For tickets phone 3358 5387 or visit www.harvestrain.com.au.

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