Jane Eyre. Northern Ballet. Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 08 to 12 April 2025 (and touring until 24 May 2025), 5✩✩✩✩✩. Review: William Ruff.

Photo Credit: Tristram Kenton.

Jane Eyre.  Northern Ballet.  Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 08 to 12 April 2025 (and touring until 24 May 2025),

5✩✩✩✩✩. Review: William Ruff. 

“A show to give your emotions a thorough workout.’”

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre isn’t a novel for the emotionally squeamish.  Its emotions run red-hot, right from the opening pages where Jane is introduced as a young orphan, unhappily lodged with her sadistic relatives.  She is horribly bullied, treated with contempt and punished for daring to complain.  She suffers further maltreatment at Lowood School, which is run by nasty evangelical tyrants and suffers not only under their hands but also when the school is ravaged by an outbreak of typhus of biblical proportions. 

And this is just the opening chapters.  You can see why it’s a story that’s ripe for Northern Ballet’s treatment.  The passions held within the novel’s pages are so strong that its central characters burst with all the emotional energy needed to unbind their bodies from the earth to send them soaring into dance.   Young Jane (Alessandra Bramante) is no passive victim when beset by her appalling cousins.  Yes, she’s only ten years old and small for her age but the way she dances expresses defiance too.  Here is a girl with a mind and life of her own, no matter how hard other try to control her. 

The heart of the story lies at Thornfield Hall where the grown-up Jane (danced with grace and intelligence by Amber Lewis) gets a position as governess.  The ‘master’ of the house is Edward Rochester, performed with all the necessary Byronic allure by a charismatic Joseph Taylor.  Their dancing together moves gradually from the coolly professional to the passionate, with Rochester eventually offering marriage.  The only problem is that Rochester’s first wife Bertha (a splendidly characterful Gemma Coutts) is very much still alive and living in the upper storey of his house.  In the novel she’s a bloated, purple-faced homicidal lunatic.  Although Northern Ballet spare us some of the more lurid details, Bertha’s appearance is still chillingly disturbing.   

One of the ballet’s most effective scenes is when Rochester and Jane are supposed to tie the knot.  With all the guests assembled in church, the minister asks routinely (or so he thinks) whether anyone knows any ‘let or hindrance’ why Jane and Rochester shouldn’t be man and wife.  In the novel it’s a local solicitor who spills the beans.  Northern Ballet has Bertha herself enter the scene, dressed luridly in red and writhing insanely in front of the assembled company.  It’s a wonderful theatrical moment. 

Northern Ballet certainly doesn’t allow things to fizzle out after that.  The story is propelled towards its high-octane conclusion with director Cathy Marston giving immense care to the narrative’s emotional pacing.  Whilst Jane and her new man, St John Rivers (George Liang), initiate a coolly chaste relationship, things hot up considerably for Rochester.  The fire started by the mad wife is visually striking and so is its immediate aftermath.  Blinded and physically damaged in his escape from the burning building, he manages to send a sort of supernatural telegram across the ether, calling for Jane.  Here is where dance comes into its own.  The passionate intensity with which Jane goes to him and with which Rochester receives her js thrillingly conveyed in the final duet.    

This is a production in which all the elements contribute to its power.  The dancing is always beautiful and always at the service of the huge range of dramatic situations.  The sets, costumes and lighting reflect the range of emotional temperature, from the coolly monochrome to the lurid intensity of the final conflagration.  Philip Feeney’s music combines adaptations of period pieces by Beethoven, Schubert etc with his own original compositions.  It all works very effectively (some wonderful screaming clarinet writing in the ill-fated wedding scene, for instance).  And the music is played live by the company’s Ensemble and conducted with precision and insight by Daniel Parkinson.  If you want a show to give your emotions a thorough work-out, then you need look no further. 

 Northern Ballet 

Amber Lewis (Jane), Joseph Taylor (Mr Rochester), Alexandra Bramante (Young Jane) 

Rachael Gillespie (Adele), Gemma Coutts (Bertha), George Liang (St John) and company. 

 Creative Team 

Cathy Marston, Choreography, Direction and Scenario 

Patrick Kinmonth, Set and Costume Design and Scenario 

Alastair West, Lighting Design 

Music Compiled and Composed by Philip Feeney 

Based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë