Eyes of realism

The traffic noise from outside belies the simulated moorland tranquillity in the quaintly-named Soho Laundry.

It isn't a real laundry; it's a room where actors rehearse their lines. The blown-up photographs of Top Withens and the hills above Haworth have been pinned to the walls to help them.

It was, says their director, the best way to create the proper atmosphere.

"The Bront landscape is so elemental, and you need to connect with that," she enthuses.

Polly Teale has adapted and is directing a new production of Jane Eyre. She has been to Haworth in the course of her researches, and as she watches her actors disperse to Soho's lunchtime sandwich bars, she concedes that a greater contrast would be hard to imagine.

"Seeing the landscape and getting pictures in your head gives you a real sense of the environment the Bronts wrote in," she says.

Miss Teale is not exactly a stranger to Yorkshire - she hails originally from Sheffield - but the arrival of Jane Eyre at the West Yorkshire Playhouse represents the fulfilment of an ambition.

She had wanted to bring her production north after its premiere at London's Young Vic, two years ago.

"For one reason or another, we weren't able to at the time," she says. "So I'm thrilled that we can now play it on its home ground. I think it will give it something special."

Her take on Charlotte Bront's much-dramatised masterpiece is to make the character of Bertha, the deranged wife whom Edward Rochester has locked in the attic, an extension of Jane Eyre herself. As such, she remains on stage for the entire production.

"She represents all Jane's rage and sensuality and her huge imagination. All the things she has to shut away in order to survive."

It is not, she acknowledges, a "straight" adaptation. In fact, it treads a dangerous path so far as Bront dramatisations on the sisters' home turf are concerned: only a few months ago, a similarly avant-garde production of Wuthering Heights at the West Yorkshire Playhouse was ridiculed by critics and audiences alike.

"I did hear it wasn't very good," says Miss Teale. "And there's no doubt that following a bad production doesn't help. On the other hand, I know that our show is selling very well. There is a pull for the Bronts."

There is, too, an honourable history of "psychological theatre" behind this new production. Miss Teale's company, Shared Experience, has won acclaim the world over for its technique of telling stories in which the private, inner lives of the characters are made tangible and placed centre stage.

The company specialises, too, in work which explores the female experience, whether as lovers, mothers or daughters.

"I first read Jane Eyre as a teenager," says the director, "and when I returned to it 15 years later, I found not the horror story I remembered but a psychological drama of the most powerful kind. "Why, I asked myself, did Charlotte Bront invent a madwoman locked in an attic to torment her heroine?"

She sees great parallels in the lives of Jane Eyre and her creator.

"The story begins with Jane being locked up in the 'red room' as a punishment because she attacks her cousin who bullies her. She loses control and lashes out and bites him. She's described as being like an animal at that moment.

"The message is clear - for a Victorian woman to express her passionate nature was to invite the severest of punishment. They had to keep their fiery spirit locked away if they were to survive."

Miss Teale gathered much about Jane Eyre by reading Charlotte Bront's diaries and letters. "I realised what a fiery person Charlotte was - someone with a really fierce temper.

"She and her sisters were terribly frustrated. They were so intelligent and they had these huge imaginations and yet their lives were so confined.

"When you start reading Charlotte's diaries, you realise she was a very passionate personality. I think she IS Jane. She's so close to her."

Fiery or not, Miss Teale does not subscribe to the recently-published theory that Charlotte may actually have killed her sisters, Emily and Anne.

"I think that's a bit mad, to be honest. But it goes to show just how much of a fascination we still have in their lives. I mean, that was in every one of the newspapers."

The setting for the new production is ethereal: a dream-like staircase that disintegrates as it rises. However, a dialogue coach has been brought in to ensure that the actors' voices are more firmly rooted in reality.

In the case of Penny Layden, who plays Jane, Yorkshire-speak comes easy: she's from Dewsbury. Not all her co-stars are as blessed.

Lunch is over, and the actors begin to trickle back from the local delis. Imagining the wide-open moors of West Yorkshire is not easy in central London. In a few days' time, they'll be unpacking their suitcases in their digs and they'll have to imagine no longer. In the meantime, those blown-up photos will have to do.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.