Royal Academy of Music – Jane Eyre

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Jane Eyre was performed by the Royal Academy of Music’s Musical Theatre Company at the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

This version of Jane Eyre, further developed in the US in the late 1990s, was completely new to me. It’s a pacy adaptation which omits a few incidents and combines some. Most of Charlotte Brontë’s plot is, however, intact and some spoken lines are verbatim from her pages.

Paul Gordon’s score (accompanied by John Caird’s book and lyrics) is rich and melodic and provides an evocative subtext to the action. And it is beautifully played by an eight-piece band, deep in the forestage pit conducted by MD Ian Sutherland. I particularly admired Kumjung Lee’s wind work on flute, alto flute, piccolo and soprano recorder.

There are two casts for this show who do three performances each. I saw Cast A. Each cast comprises 13 performers. All are students on Royal Academy of Music’s one-year post graduate Musical Theatre course which operates as a company.

Of course this is the Royal Academy of Music so you expect a very high singing standard and you get it. Lucy Carter is stunningly good as Jane. The part is written at the pitch of an old-fashioned contralto without any upper register belting and you don’t hear that much these days, now that nearly every female singer seems to be a mezzo soprano. Carter has colourful vibrance at this register and the musicality of her phrasing is remarkable. At the same time she has all the right impassioned, feisty resolution for Jane Eyre. Her rendition of ‘Painting Her Portrait’ in Act II really captures Jane’s tense, bitter, self-flagellatory anguish too. I hope we see a lot more of her in the future.

Jessica Johns-Parsons doubles as Mrs Reed and Mrs Fairfax, two very different women, and is clearly having a lot of fun. This knowing, bossy, nosey take on Mrs Fairfax might upset Bronte purists but Johns-Parsons carries it off splendidly and is very funny as well as singing with clarity, conviction and skill. Her “Slip of a Girl” number glitters with glee.

Petur Svavarsson gives us a pleasing Rochester – attractive, but troubled as the role requires. He gives us a lot of accomplished, passionate singing but his best moment is the 6/8 falsetto number in the fortune teller scene with the gypsy violin music full of cheeky glissandi coming from the pit.

Each member of the ensemble also has a named role and this production makes interesting use of a chorus to provide different thoughts from the main character which could be confusing but mostly isn’t.

Hannah Chissick’s production includes a lot of expressive, impressionistic choreography (Ainsley Hall-Ricketts). Chairs, picture frames and lamps move round the stage in the hands of performers to drive the narrative on and reinforce it. Mr Rochester’s riding accident is a choreographic tour de force too.

April Dalton’s set is another delight. She does a lot of ingenious things with half staircases and balconies over bookcases which are manually pushed round the stage into different formations. It means that we move seamlessly from scene to scene.

Susan Elkin