Rep doubles up vision of ‘Jane Eyre’
Her nemesis tears at bonds of the era
Charlotte Brontë begins “Jane Eyre” in the cold, as young Jane takes shelter from a “chilly afternoon” and reads of the Arctic’s “forlorn regions of dreary space.”
Jane could have been describing scenic designer Kris Stone’s cold but effective modernist set for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s stark production of “Jane Eyre,” which opened Friday night under KJ Sanchez’s direction.
Underscoring the isolated Jane’s own deprivation as well as the bleak northern England of Brontë’s novel, Stone’s nearly bare, off-white foreground is linked through a series of climbing switchbacks to a small upstage box containing a red room, perched above and seemingly removed from the set.
That red room is where an orphaned Jane is locked away as a child by relatives treating her with contempt and cruelty. And it’s where Bertha — Jane’s nemesis but also her double — is locked away during much of this play, watching Jane morph into the proper Victorian woman that Bertha herself is never able to be.
In the Polly Teale adaptation being staged here, Margaret Ivey’s Jane and Rin Allen’s Bertha had once been boon companions. Initially dressed in red, Bertha shadows the more austerely dressed Jane, while embodying the lithe, free-spirited side of herself that Jane gradually learns to tamp down. It is Jane who first locks Bertha away, in a world where women are rendered invisible.
As she paces the red room, Allen gives big, full-throttled expression to all that the corseted Jane cannot. Harrowing as a sometimes straitjacketed mad woman, Allen can also be beautiful as she joyfully embodies Jane’s passion, channeling Peter Kyle’s striking movement choreography.
For all that, I’ll admit there were times I forgot Allen was perched above me; that’s the point. Along with Ivey’s Jane, I instead found myself caught up in the busy nothings of the conscious world, brought to life by an ensemble of eight additional actors playing dozens of characters as well as animals.
Andy Paterson, for example, injected humor through his presentation of Pilot, Rochester’s dog; Rebecca Hirota did the same as the impish Adèle, for whom Jane serves as governess.
Treating the set as a giant percussive instrument, ensemble members also pounded the sound of Jane’s furiously beating heart — true to all she feels for Rochester, whom Michael Sharon presents as gruff and saturnine but also smoldering with repressed passion. Sharon and Ivey sell the great love their characters share.
I wasn’t always sold on this adaptation; it can feel rushed after intermission, despite Sanchez’s smooth, well-executed transitions.
More important, Teale never reconciles her doubling conceit — which champions Bertha’s passion — with a novel that eventually kills Bertha off. In the waning moments of the play, Allen’s resurrected Bertha can seem insipid. Then again, one can sometimes say the same of Brontë’s Jane, created in an era when even a radical writer felt compelled to pull her punches.
“Jane Eyre” continues through May 21 at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, visit milwaukeerep.com. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.