Compelling drama from Northern Ballet in Jane Eyre

David Mead is at the Curve, Leicester
June 18, 2016

Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre for Northern Ballet is a stylish telling of the story. Unlike some other choreographers who opt to cut the initial chapters of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, preferring to focus almost entirely on her time at Thornfield, Marston manages to get almost the whole story in, taking us seamlessly from young Jane being orphaned, through being institutionalised at Lowood, to her encounters with Mr Rochester. Although that means things move on quickly at times, the plot is easy to follow, scenes and moods invariably flowing seamlessly into one another.

Antoinette Brooks-Daw is a defiant young Jane, clearly already a woman with a mind of her own. The opening scene in the cemetery over her uncle’s grave is touching. It’s here we first see the male chorus that throughout embodies the demons present in Jane’s mind. They swarm around, sometimes pushing her on, sometimes impeding her progress. It’s a great device that suggests the rolling, tossing storm that’s forever going on in her mind. Looked at another way, they can also be seen as dark angels, endlessly stalking her. Jane’s later fights with her bullying cousins, especially the nasty John, are well done.

Here, as everywhere, Marston’s choreography has decidedly European contemporary ballet edge to it, especially in the early scenes. It’s a sort of stylised naturalism born no doubt of her time on the continent. It’s all most eloquent as Young Jane’s dance shifts from stillness to surging movement. Fists clenched across her chest, elbows jutted out are a recurring feature.

Hannah Bateman is perfect as the older Jane, fresh and compelling, her demeanour combining the same steely determination with quiet restraint. As powerful as her dance is, some of the most striking moments come when she sits or stands stock still, her mind elsewhere, thinking of what is or was or might be. That fist motif is still there, but now usually with one tucked discretely behind her back.

Javier Torres is a dark, handsome Rochester. Marston deliberately portrays him as someone younger than usual; a wise move. From the off, he is clearly a man with emotional issues and hidden secrets. He’s also a man with manly desires. When he sits in his chair, it’s with legs spread. When Jane walks past he sticks out a leg to stop her. The development of their relationship is done sensitively and depicted in very real terms. We see them spar, forcibly and playfully. There’s one lovely moment when their feet interlock in some tricky footwork that ends with her giving him a little, playful kick. Their big pas de deux in Act II starts with mutual support – at one point she cradles him gently – before she is swept away in a series of soaring, dramatic lifts.

There are a host of other superb characterisations, each rich in detail. At Lowood, the girls are all regimented, overseen by dominating, autocratic Mlindi Kulashe as Reverend Brocklehurst. It’s there that Jane’s friendship with Helen Burns (Kiara Flavin) is beautifully portrayed in an all too brief tender, caressing duet.

The Thornfield housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax (Pippa Moore), is a bag of nerves, not surprising given the secret she is in on. Jane’s pupil at the house, Adele (Rachael Gillespie) is drawn as a bouncy, daffy, excitable young lady, the vivid pink of her costume and innocence of her dance contrasting powerfully with the greyness surrounding her. Blanche Ingram is a sexy socialite, but also a woman with a will. Having attracted the attentions of Rochester, when she looks at Jane, the message, “he’s mine,” is plain. Bertha Mason (Victoria Sibson) is mostly a presence felt but not seen. When she arrives at the wedding of Rochester and Blanche, it’s almost as a ghost. She is all too real, though. Her later forceful solo as she meets her end in her end in the flames in her equally fiery red tattered dress is worth waiting for.

Whether it’s Lowood or Thornfield, Patrick Kinmonth’s stylised set in browns and greys creates a sense of confinement, of dark walls closing in, and of tension. At the back, a giant charcoal-like sketch gives more than a suggestion of the sweep of the vast, dark moorland. Indoors, chairs are used to great effect to give a sense of place, be it classroom chairs at Lowood, Rochester’s armchair or a few dining room chairs. Alistair West’s lighting adds to the mood, with his depiction of the fire at Thornfield particularly effective.

Everything is danced to yet another fine score by Philip Feeney that combines some appropriately 19th-century works, including by Schubert and the often overlooked composer-pianist Fanny Mendelssohn, with his own compositions. As one would expect from Feeney, it is all extremely danceable, gives a period feel and sits perfectly with the plot.

It all ends with Jane walking downstage by herself, walking into the future. It leaves a sense of a story only partly told, and a wonderful, lingering image to take home.

Northern Ballet have more Brontë ballet in September when David Nixon’s Wuthering Heights is at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds (September 2-10). For details visit www.northernballet.com/wuthering-heights.