Jane Eyre to show us ‘how to be right in love’ at Rosemary Branch theatre

Jane Eyre at the Rosemary Branch theatre, recipient of three Off West End awards 2014. Photograph: Bill Knight

Of all the nineteenth-century classics collecting dust on the bookshelves, Charlotte Brontë’s erotically-charged tale of the orphaned ‘plain’ Jane who struggles for independence is one that remains a captivating page-turner today.

Jane Eyre’s hold on the reader comes partly from Brontë’s use of the eighteenth-century epistolary style of writing, making us feel we are in secret communication with the narrator, and partly from the gothic mystery surrounding Thornfield Hall and the enigmatic Mr Rochester.

This textual feel and diaristic quality to the novel was emphasised in last year’s in-house production of Jane Eyre at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, and the play is now back by popular demand for another run this March.

Hailed by The Stage as ‘fringe theatre at its best’, the play is directed by artistic associate of the Rosemary Branch Bryony J Thompson, who adapted the novel herself.

“I had a long look round at adaptations of the book and I couldn’t find anything that told the story the way I wanted to tell it, or that seemed like it was being true to the text so I decided I would adapt it myself,” she says.

Resisting the temptation to modernise, Thompson felt the story was of its time. Taking Jane out of the 1840s would mean the proto-feminist narrative would all but disappear and the director wanted to keep Jane’s journey of self-discovery as the heart of the play.

“Deciding to go back [to Mr Rochester] is one of the most lovely stories, it is essentially a love story but it is also about how to be moral, and right in love,” she says.

Thompson has kept Brontë’s original words, lifting the sentences straight off the page and onto the stage. The design is intended to feel like “a book coming to life”, and plays homage to the texture of writing using materials inspired by parchment, vellum and leather.

With its small cast, intimate surroundings and appreciation of the fabric of the novel, the story of the intriguing governess at the Rosemary Branch theatre will no doubt provide a refreshing antidote to the big-budget period drama.

Jane Eyre is at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Road, N1 3DT from 12-30 March.