After Mrs Rochester

Synopsis

This award-winning play revolves around two extraordinary characters - author Jean Rhys and Mrs Rochester, the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre. Rhys gave Mrs Rochester her own life in the 1957 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, and this compelling play explores how she developed her highly acclaimed story, using her own experiences and personality to bring to life a character she was obsessed with. This is a haunting and emotional piece of theatre.

Our Review:

22 July 2003

Shared Experiences' After Mrs Rochester has docked in the West End after a regional tour. Written and directed by company artistic director Polly Teale, it relates the story of novelist Jean Rhys, famous for - amongst others - Wide Sargasso Sea about Mrs Rochester, the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre.

We are presented with three parts of Jean: Her older self (Diana Quick), locked in a room in Devon in a part-drunken, part-dillusional reverie of her life, the young Jean (Madeleine Potter) who relives her turbulent story and the third Jean, who is Mrs Rochester (Sarah Ball). Rhys was obsessed with Bronte's novel and we see a personification of Rhys' primitive and animal side prowling the stage, in the shape of the eponymous Mrs Rochester who gradually becomes more vocal as Rhys descends into the abyss.

Angela Davies' set is like a raft, carrying Rhys on her travels with a pile of suitcases and a wardrobe as cargo. The cyclor...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (195.144.130.1) - 22 August 2003:

The first time I've given fewer than 5 stars to a Shared Experience production. It was an absorbing, instructive evening, but I just had that nagging feeling that in terms of SE's stagecraft we've been here too often before. Here's the familiar 'mind' figure crawling all over the stage exactly as in their Doll's House, and there's the three-actors-playing-one-role trick from Mill On The Floss (far and away their best show, I reckon)... in fact the whole production left me with a sese of theatrical déjà vu and a distinct sense of style eclipsing substance. But I did apreciate the dreamy otherness of it all, and most of the performances were exceptional - especially that of Madeline Potter, who carries so much of the drama. Job...

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