Third Space Theatre Company’s iteration of Polly Teal’s [sic] Brontë is an entirely charming production that marks the end of another successful term of student theatre under the lights of the Assembly Rooms Theatre.  At its core, a number of excellent performances elevate the play into resounding success. [...]

Immediately striking is the beautifully designed stage that is fully fleshed out to create the Brontë’s home. All the wooden furniture is perfectly fitting; the back wall is filled with books and hung with pictures all to build up this domestic affair. Brightening this set is some lovely lighting, designed by Cassia Thurston, that is varied in both scope and colour, rising to the challenge of spotlighting characters entering down past the audience a number of times. Similarly, I thought the sound design, designed by Oliver Fitzgerald, backed up the more emotional moments very well, although I thought there needed to be a more noticeable fade for the end of effects so that music didn’t end quite so abruptly. Additionally, I really liked the costume design by Ellie Kinch as the three sisters are decorated in period-accurate dresses and three different colours to give them visually distinct appearances. 

However, the key to this performance’s success is undoubtedly the strength of the acting, which is consistently good across a cast of just seven actors. The dynamic between all three Brontë sisters is brilliant, with the most time given to fleshing out the bubbling tensions between Charlotte (Peony Reece) and Emily (Martha Buttle). The two play off each other very well with their frequent clashes constantly raising tensions and building the drama. I also enjoyed Jake O’Donnell’s performance as the domineering, and quite frankly scary, father figure who tries to keep the three girls in line; he is totally in control of his dynamic range the whole way through to establish authority. Similarly, Matthew Lo delivers wonderfully in his trio of roles, delivering an unexpectedly hilarious turn in the play’s climax. Nevertheless, the most committed performance comes in the form of Branwell Brontë, played by Jack Guilfoyle, who embodies this utterly detestable character before his downfall in the second half. 

I also thought there were a number of great directorial choices, under the watchful eye of Grace Graham, that contributed to the creation of this spectacle. Throughout the play, different characters suddenly switch into fictional characters from within the Brontë’s books and deliver lines in perfect unison with the sisters. The use of the three sisters as narrators at varying moments also works well, seamlessly switching from sister to narrator and back again. However, even if you are familiar with the Brontës’ fiction, it’s sometimes a little confusing when a character switches from a historical figure into a fictional one from their writing – although I think this is more a pitfall of the original script. I’d have also liked to see a little more consistency over accents, as the cast doesn’t seem unified over one specific accent choice. 

Nevertheless, the play builds towards a dramatic ending that pulls on the audience’s heartstrings as characters die – as in real life –  suddenly and unexpectedly. Branwell’s death scene in particular features a really touching choice that sees the sisters mourning at the front of the stage, as he acts out childhood fantasies on a chair in the middle of the stage, recalling the first half’s initial domestic bliss that has subsequently been shattered. 

Overall, the play is a resounding success through its balancing over excellent performances all-round with suitable directing choices that bring the Brontë sisters’ story entirely to life. The consistent standard set throughout all facets of the production really exemplifies what makes student theatre so brilliant in Durham. (Ralph Hargreaves)

   

An exhibition in Dallas with oil paintings inspired by Jane Eyre 2011:

Michelle Rawlings´

Dec.06.2025 - Jan.03.2026

James Cope Gallery,  4885 Alpha Road, Suite 120, Farmers Branch, Dallas

   

Colbert asked Swift a particularly poignant question: “What’s the biggest difference between Taylor Swift just walking around and Taylor Swift who appears on stage?”

Setting the scene for Swift, he added, “You’re home, you’ve got the athleisure on,” to which the star quickly corrected him, revealing that her at-home wardrobe leans less model-off-duty and more Victorian ghost.

“I’ve got an old Victorian nightgown on,” she said with a laugh. “I prefer to look… if you were to see me in the window, I’d like for someone to think they saw a ghost, you know what I mean?”

This came as no shock to fans who have listened to Swift’s music over the years, which has drawn from the antiquated language of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and the imagery from period pieces alike. Particularly on folklore and evermore, Swift wrote songs she’d later categorize as “quill pen” tracks, named for the tool she imagined writing the lyrics in. “If my lyrics sound like a letter written by Emily Dickinson’s great grandmother while sewing a lace curtain, that’s me writing in the Quill genre,” Swift said in her acceptance speech at the 2022 Nashville Songwriter Awards.

Elsewhere in the Colbert interview, the singer described the types of books one would find on her metaphorical nightstand, evoking similar visual worlds of ghosts, Victorian tropes, and ivy-covered castles. (Sophie Wang)

   

“Je Reviens”—Returning to Jane Eyre in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca
Proud Sethabutr Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

Vol. 45 No. 2 (2025): Thoughts 2025-2

This paper takes as its starting point the body of feminist criticism that treats Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca as merely a recapitulation of Jane Eyre, often dismissively, as evidenced in du Maurier scholar Nina Auerbach’s uncharacteristically scathing indictment of the novel, and proposes instead to read it as a narratological continuation or expansion of Jane’s epilogue. Through a close reading of the way that the novel disrupts boundaries between self and other, human and nature, beauty and the sublime, feminine and monstrous, and the domestic order itself, the paper argues that Rebecca is a site in which a certain narrative excess in the earlier novel makes an uncanny reappearance. This approach yields an analysis that highlights how the novel exposes the violence inherent in Jane Eyre’s Gothic romance narrative, wherein a woman's security within the domestic order comes at the expense of another.