Jane Eyre

[ashbash6819]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 1:58pm

hey did anyone in here see Jane Eyre. i was soo upset when it closed, i never got to see it. i got the Cd and next thing i know i hear its closed. just wanted to see if anyone could tell me how it was or anything like that!thanks

[KMF_NYC]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 2:08pm

I loved this show -- I have mentioned often in other threads that this show deserved a long run -- James Barbour and Marla were very solid in their performances and the staging and scenics were stunning....

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 2:10pm

I remember being thoroughly frightened by the show... but I couldn't have been more than 13, I guess. The sets were stunning, and Marla is very, VERY talented, though. I think I need to re-visit the music at some point... I only remember small snippets of it.

[KMF_NYC]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 2:18pm

I just listened to this yesterday...I really love the score -- it is full, lush and beautifully orchestrated -- a few songs I pass through but that is to be expected -- but some of the numbers still bring me to tears, especially Brave ENough for Love and Barbour is at his best in "As Good As You and Farewll Good Angel"--

I love most that this is a period show that refuses to go "pop".

[ashbash6819]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 2:37pm

i definitly agree with you about the music, it is just awsome!!!i wish i would have gotten to see the show...it had to have been great! i read the book also and i still cant get over how awsome that was!

[KMF_NYC]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 2:46pm

this thread made me turn my Dell DJ on to listen again!

"I would never lose faith
I would never lose heart
I would stand by your side....

Tears are starting.....

[ca_muzikgurl]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 2:57pm

The Broadway production of this musical will always be one of my favorites.
I have never been so moved by a show. It's unfortunate that The Producers overshadowed everything that year.
James Barbour commented that if the show had opened the year before, it would have won the Tony for Best Musical.
The cast album is nice, but I don't think it was able to capture half of the passion of the show, not to mention the amazing power of James Barbour's voice.
The UK premiere is coming in September. Perhaps it will transfer to the West End.

[MagicToDo82]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 3:18pm

What an amazing score. I stumbled on it purely by accident and fell in love with the music. I wish I could have seen it.

[VeuveClicquot]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 3:39pm

The first line of "As Good As You" bothers me:

"Love is like a virus we're infected with"

Viruses weren't discovered until 1892. Bacteria weren't even discovered until 1850, well after the time period of JANE EYRE. The concept of infection didn't exist in the early 19th century, and yet Rochester and Jane sing about it frequently in the score ("His life has infected every wound and every pore").

[ca_muzikgurl]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 3:43pm

Whoa.
Veuve, I think you need a cookie.

[MagicToDo82]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 3:43pm

VeuveClicquot...Really? I didn't know that. Yep, that'll bother me forever now:)

[Mother's Younger Brother]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 3:49pm

I saw the 2nd preview of the show and loved it. I think it's one of the most sadly underrated musicals of recent years. The cast, in addition to the two leads, was uniformly excellent, and all seemed to "get" the style and period of the show. The score is hauntingly beautiful in its melodies and poetic and literate in its lyrics. I left the theatre after having seen it, and felt then and there that it probably wouldn't be much of a hit. It seemed like it had come along about 10 years too late, as serious/romantic "pop-operas" (I hate that term) were going out of fashion. It just couldn't compete in the new world of The Full Monty, The Producers, Hairspray, and the like.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 3:57pm

neither CD has the whole score so that bothers me. the Toronto cast is awesome. I made a CD combining the two so I didn't have to switch CDs... damn record producers...

[BWayBoy88]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 4:01pm

I just heard the OBCR the other day and I thought it was really good. What did the critics think of the show?

[Jimmcf]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 4:05pm

I remember liking it, but I think it got mixed to negative critical reception. I remember a family behind me...the females loved it, the males hated it.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 4:12pm

Critics, for the most part, praised Marla lavishly and lambasted the show and score.
For the record, the previous incarnation of the show as it premiered at La Jolla Playhouse was better. :)

[DottieD'Luscia]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 4:14pm

Marla was simply amazing as Jane Eyre. I was sorry she didn't win the Tony that year.

James Barbour was very good as well. He has such a beautiful voice.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 4:20pm

I saw it in La Jolla too. I can't vouch for it being better or worse on Broadway but it was amazing in La Jolla...

[Jimmcf]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 4:23pm

NY Times:

THEATER REVIEW; An Arsonist In the Attic; A Feminist In the Making

By BRUCE WEBER
Published: December 11, 2000

In 'Jane Eyre,' Charlotte Bronte unleashed a full and independent female spirit on the repressive Victorian landscape. Her heroine is plain looking and honest, spiny and kind, pious and passionate, and she overcomes the poor orphanhood of her upbringing and the prevailing cruelties of a caste-bound society to achieve a home, a husband, a family, a fortune and spiritual peace.

In the end, she has it all, as the Victorians might have perceived it, and the novel, published in 1847, has endured as a kind of feminist ur-text, richly analyzed, sociologically and psychologically, for its fierce assertion of womanliness. Among other things, Bertha, the novel's famously libidinous shadow character, has become perhaps literature's most famous symbol of closeted desire, the proverbial madwoman in the attic. The novel is also, of course, a magnificent melodrama, a florid Gothic romance set in dank chambers, posh drawing rooms and efflorescent gardens, a tale of love lost and regained, tragedy mourned and triumphed over, a godly sense of retribution and reward over all.

With such an opulence of imagery and emotion to work with, so much history and psychodrama to forage in, it is no surprise that the novel has attracted adapters for the screen and stage. But even with a dignified, assured performance by Marla Schaffel in the title role, the gloomy and mundane musical version of 'Jane Eyre' that opened yesterday on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theater captures few of the richly available nuances.

What stands out in this production is the sense of scene-by-scene problem solving, a connect-the-dots approach to narrative that is particularly disappointing given the pedigree of the show's creators. John Caird, who wrote the earnestly literate book and was co-director of the show with Scott Schwartz, and the set designer, John Napier, are, after all, largely responsible for 'Les Miserables' (with Mr. Caird as co-director with Trevor Nunn), the most brilliantly successful melding ever of theatrical and literary sweep.

But from the moment that Ms. Schaffel emerges from darkness to open the show with a nod to Bronte's polite first person -- 'My story begins, gentle audience, a long age ago' -- the storytelling is fitful and hurried, a pace that accommodates a soundtrack but rarely pauses long enough for an actual song.

Onstage, Ms. Schaffel watches her childhood unfold with dispatch. Young Jane (Lisa Musser) is tormented by her mean-spirited aunt and vicious cousin. She's tormented by a vitriolic schoolmaster. Her one friend succumbs to illness. Eight years pass, and Jane arrives at Thornfield mansion to serve as a governess for the ward of the mysterious Edward Rochester. Thirty minutes into the show, Jane, walking in the Thornfield woods, and Rochester (James Barbour), who has tumbled from his horse, have begun the eventful, push-pull courtship that commandeers the rest of the evening.

To be sure, 'Jane Eyre,' in gestation since 1995, has evolved into a very handsome, if very dark, production. Aided by Tony-worthy lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, Mr. Napier has given the show a techno-sleek beauty, employing a series of both fixed and mobile scrims onto which scenic slides are projected. The lights are mounted on a huge carousel that can also handle enormous hanging props like chandeliers and paintings and windows, swinging them into place in midair, Magritte-like.

Onstage a turntable revolves, bringing with it a steady parade of period furniture and topiary. So despite the breakneck narrative pace, the physical energy in the production is largely provided by props and light; remarkably, there's so little dancing -- just one quickly aborted party minuet -- that no choreographer gets a credit.

The tableaus are often striking, part museum, part cyberspace; but the futuristic fizz in the atmosphere seems awfully distant from the Victorian tale unfolding within it, and the overall inventiveness isn't entirely immune to dull ideas. In the Act I finale, Jane and Rochester, in different rooms, sing a bedtime duet, each confessing the anguish of their undeclared love. It is Bertha (Marguerite MacIntyre), the still-secret wife with the unsubtle arsonist's compulsion, who keeps them apart, but when she suddenly appears, spectrally lighted, above and between them in the attic, the image is so predictable as to be sophomoric.

Still the design and lighting here are far from tepid, which is one word to apply to the score by Paul Gordon, whose work seems to be straight from the Broadway schmaltz kit of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Claude-Michel Schonberg. Mr. Gordon has written a lot of music for the show -- much of the dialogue is delivered in semi-recitative -- but the songs are few. Instead we are given an undertow of melodic snippets, mostly of the brief arpeggio variety, climbing and descending stairs, resplendent with soapy minor-key harmonics, vaguely familiar and repeating themselves with abandon. At least their prettily orchestrated manipulations seem to work on the audience, and they are very well sung.

The dark-haired Ms. Schaffel, who is much prettier than Jane is supposed to be, handles a huge role with remarkable aplomb. She has a strong, warm voice that is a central component of her winning performance, which is always cognizant of the kindness and humility that supports a heroic carriage. In a supporting role, Mary Stout, as Mrs. Fairfax, the deaf and distracted housekeeper at Thornfield, provides a welcome lightheartedness, both as a character and as a warbly, worrywart singer, and Elizabeth DeGrazia, as Blanche Ingram, the spoiled woman with her sights set on being mistress of Thornfield, renders her paean to Rochester's riches, 'The Finer Things,' in a lovely soprano.

Mr. Barbour has a pleasing baritone, and he shows off both vocal power and vocal wit, but as the swaggery Rochester, whose anger masks his tormented soul, he seems like a visitor from another century. With the mussed and moppy hairdo of a rock singer, a softness of profile and the slightly hunched posture of a teenage jock, he blusters with the kind of arrogance that is manufactured out of uncertainty, a manner reminiscent of a young John Travolta.

It's a disconcerting performance that, among other things, defies a chemical connection with Ms. Schaffel's Jane. That they privately lust for each other has to be taken on faith, and when they finally get together, the reunion sends off no sparks, just dispassionate relief.

In part, this, too, seems to be a function of the show's perfunctory consideration of the lushness of the novel. The overall gallop through Bronte's significant plot has the teasing quality of a movie trailer. We barely see Bertha when she sneaks down from the attic to set Rochester's bed aflame. Mr. Gordon's most inventive song, 'The Gypsy,' a wicked ditty that accompanies Bronte's cleverest ruse, the fortuneteller used by Rochester to turn off Blanche's affections, is all too brief because the scene is a blip.

You can see why speed is essential; the show runs three hours even with its accelerator to the floor. But it's a failing that the directors have used the Bronte story for mere stage directions. The result is that a great adult fable has been attenuated to the thinness of a children's story.

[ashbash6819]

Posted: 1/3/05 at 5:09pm

wow i cant believe they found that much wrong with it