SUNDAY/MONDAY: It’s coming down to the wire. I have two plays to report on before I see my final three plays tonight and tomorrow. Jane Eyre at the National Theatre is a 3½ hour telling of the novel, adapted from a longer version produced over two nights by the Bristol Old Vic. It’s a long novel, and this play covers pretty much all of it: the harsh Reed household, the even harsher Lowood School, the life at Thornfield, the wedding gone awry, crazy St. John Rivers, the fire, the reconciliation, the birth of a daughter (a son in the book, if I remember correctly). So it doesn’t exactly follow the classical unities of time and place! The show is a big hit, and rightfully so. It’s excellent middlebrow entertainment. That’s a backhanded compliment, but it’s because
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