To Eyre Is Human At Hartford Stage
, Helen Sadler (Jane Eyre), Chandler Williams (Mr. Rochester). Photos by Skylar Agnello/Hartford Stage
It seems you can’t swing a dramaturg without hitting a stage adaptation of a novel by Charlotte Bronte, Mary Shelley, Louisa May Alcott or Jane Austen. Besides the fact that these novels are in the public domain, what gives?
“I think one of the appeals is that these are women writing in the early period of the novel and they’re writing women’s stories,” says Elizabeth Williamson, who has adapted and directed Jane Eyre for Hartford Stage, running Feb. 13 to March 14. “This one is not an I’m-going-to-get-married story but rather one that asks, ‘How do I make a life for myself when I have no home and I’m a plain woman?’ There is a sense in these works that these are women trying to find out who they are. Jane has a great deal of tenacity, and she is intelligent and witty, too.”
What’s the secret of adapting literary classics? “One of the nice things about Jane Eyre is that it is so dramatic that it lends itself well to the stage, plenty of action, adventure and romance. Here it’s a Gothic romance that runs on the engine of a mystery.”
But is there a danger of putting too much of a contemporary veneer on 19th-century tales? “That’s something I’m working very hard not to do. It’s very much in the period when it was written. I’m fascinated by the psychology of the characters, which is dependent on the context of the period it was written.”
