PICT finds a classic match in gothic romance ‘Jane Eyre’
For most of her young life, the people in Jane Eyre’s orbit want to pigeonhole the poor orphan with a will of steel. And she keeps setting them straight.
Call her a liar, a malcontent or a “fragile bird,” and she will deny all. Ask her how to avoid the fiery pits of hell, and she answers, “I must keep in good health and not die.”
Even amid the melodrama of storm-swept 19th-century Northern England, rays of humor shine into Jane’s life now and again.
These moments are among the insights illuminated in Alan Stanford’s faithful stage adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.”
The PICT Classic Theatre production at WQED’s Fred Rogers Studio tells the gothic tale in flashback, with an older Jane (the indispensable Cary Anne Spear) as our narrator and guide. We see Jane in three phases of life, first through the eyes of a plucky orphan (Caroline Lucas as young Jane), ill-used by society and constantly referred to as plain — if not the original plain Jane, perhaps literature’s best-known.
She matures to age 20 (Karen Baum) and becomes governess at the Thornfield manor house, home to Edward Rochester and his ward, Adele (Grace Vensel).
Paul Joseph Bernardo, a classical actor with a commanding presence, makes his Pittsburgh debut as the haunted Edward, who is unlucky in love and most other things. Edward enters Jane’s life in dramatic fashion, somersaulting onto the stage (in a fall from an offstage horse) — a literal falling for her at first sight.
As the mismatched couple, Mr. Bernardo and Ms. Baum are wellmatched as actors. They capture the tension of people who have experienced humanity’s darkest