Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Free spirit takes flight
PAUL FOLEY sees a life-affirming adaptation of the classic novel Jane Eyre
jane eyre
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
Jane Eyre
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
4*
“I AM no bird and no net ensnares me. I am a free human being with an independent will” — thus Charlotte Bronte’s great heroine Jane Eyre declares defiantly as she rages against a world that not only enslaves women but denounces those who speak out in the name of equality.
It's little wonder that the novel caused such an uproar when first published in 1846, with one reviewer accusing Bronte of being nothing more than a Chartist sympathiser. Given the novelist's withering attack on “good” society, it was a label that she was probably proud to wear.
Bronte's story follows Jane’s life from a poor orphan cruelly treated by her aunt and her banishment to an oppressive religious boarding school. As a young woman she appears to find some happiness as a governess for the rather odd Mr Rochester’s ward.
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