Oh god let me out: Jane Eyre at the National Theatre
Jane Eyre
Bristol Old Vic and National Theatre
Lyttelton, National Theatre
Stalls A9, £15
28 September 2017
NT page
Oh god, oh god, why did I go to see Jane Eyre? All the clues were there that this would be entirely not my cup of tea, had I heeded them. Woe, woe.
There are obviously things about this Jane Eyre that are objectively good. The actors are committed and tireless; the onstage musicians are talented and resourceful; the whole event is highly professional, almost brutally so. There are also some ideas I enjoy. Making Bertha Rochester an abstract but unmistakeable presence through the onstage singer is a neat way round the story's complicity in this character's abuse. The visual motif of windows burst open and slammed shut is apt and nicely realized. The first fire was properly frightening.
But amplification is becoming the increasingly vexing obstacle to my enjoyment of theatre. The experience of Woyzeck in Winter suggests that if I forked out for more expensive tickets I might save myself some vex. But I have spent many an enjoyable evening in those front-row day seats at the Lyttelton and it is sad to realize that what makes those seats enjoyable – their proximity to the actors – is negated by the apparent fashion for heavy amplification. Woe.
So this Jane Eyre amplifies the actors. Fine, I know the Lyttelton is problematic for that. So it also amplifies the onstage musicians and singer. This would be unnecessary but is made necessary by two creative decisions: the use of recorded music in addition to the live band; and the attempt to use audio volume to replicate the book's intensity.
Both decisions offend me, no doubt excessively so. The mixture of audible acoustic instruments, an amplified version of those acoustic instruments, and a not-good-enough amplified pre-recording of some other acoustic instruments, is an aesthetic disaster. The attempt to use a high-volume version of this aesthetic disaster to induce feelings of intensity is woefully crude – even cinemas, which are set up for this kind of thing in a way the Lyttelton isn't, can get this disastrously wrong – and does not come anywhere near to approaching what Brontë achieved with the economy of words on the page. Woe, woe.
All this unfortunate bugbear-prodding disposed me against the rest of the adaptation, which in other circumstances I might not have minded so much. I grumpily stereotyped the production as theatrical to the point of parody, with its actors pretending to be dogs and shouting the word 'slap!' when someone was slapped and all of that. I'm also not sure Jane Eyre is a suitable vehicle for so much music. And I spent much time wondering darkly how much the world really needed yet another Jane Eyre adaptation. But then it wouldn't do if we all read Jane Eyre alike.
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