Non-review: Jane Eyre

The regular readers of this blog will both recall that I don't technically like to say what I've written is a review, if I didn't see the whole show. Full disclosure, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was one of my A'Level English texts and I didn't like it then. So when an adaptation was announced at the National Theatre I was cautious, but booked anyway because the production - which originated in Bristol - had got good reviews and been praised as a revelatory take on the story. Director Sally Cookson and her cast have adapted and devised a highly physical telling of the story of Jane (Madeleine Worrall,) orphaned as a baby¹ when her parents catch a fatal case of interpretative dance. She's sent to an uncle, who also promptly pops his clogs, and after the requisite Wicked Stepmother behaviour from her aunt (Maggie Tagney) and cousins, she's shipped off to a charity school for unwanted girls.

Theatre review: Cinderella, a Fairytale (St James Theatre)

I'd not had any plans to see the St James Theatre's Christmas show, Cinderella, a Fairytale, but an enthusiastic recommendation from another blogger coupled with a decent last-minute discount deal saw me fill an empty evening with Sally Cookson's production, originally seen in Bristol. As well as avoiding the pantomime route, Cookson has also dropped the more familiar French version of the fairytale, devising her version with the cast principally from the Brothers Grimm's Aschenputtel, with elements from the Chinese version Yeh-Hsien as well. So Ella (Lisa Kerr) is a girl whose widowed father dies soon after he remarries, leaving her in the care of a wicked Step Mother; and there's still a Prince seeking a wife at the Palace ball. But instead of a fairy godmother there's a flock of magical birds to help Ella on her way, and when it comes down to fitting a lost slipper onto the girls of the kingdom, a couple of toes might have to be chopped off it helps nab a royal husband.