Theater review: A Jane Eyre and Rochester with real chemistry in musical adaptation

Theater Review |

Nominated in 2001 for five Tony awards, including best new musical, "Jane Eyre" went down in flames, failing to win in any category as Mel Brooks' historically unstoppable "The Producers" wiped out the competition.

Now it's been resurrected by Seattle Musical Theatre (formerly Civic Light Opera), which scores on several levels. While the show itself, based on Charlotte Brontë's much-adapted 1847 novel, is an uneven affair, the company does an impressive job with the material they've been given.

Paul Linnes heads a vigorous five-piece band that's always in sync with a strong cast of singers. Carl Bronsdon's stark deep-blue set, which suggests both a crypt and a chapel, seems to have settled Sleeping Beauty's castle in an enchanted but tangled forest.

Best of all, there's chemistry in the casting of the two leads. In the title role, playing a much-abused orphan who becomes a governess, Danielle Barnum is reserved yet always compelling. The attraction between Jane and her employer, Edward Rochester (James Padilla), is established at their first meeting, and it only grows as they find themselves defying convention and contemplating marriage.

Keaton Whittaker plays the young Jane, who frequently shares the stage with Barnum. What could have been a gimmick becomes a legitimate way of suggesting the power of memory; director Gregory Magyar uses it to create the play's most touching moments. Standouts in the comic-relief department are Walayn Sharples as the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax; and Jenny Shotwell as Jane's romantic rival, Blanche Ingram.

Still, there's only so much the actors can do with a collection of songs that, especially during the second half, become plot-heavy and overwritten. "Forgiveness," sung by Jane's doomed childhood friend, Helen, is handled with conviction by Olivia Spokoiny (Barnum's reprise of it is equally affecting), and Shotwell does yank some laughs out of the rowdy "The Finer Things."

The composer, Paul Gordon, who more recently created a musical based on Jane Austen's "Emma," once claimed he's never stopped rewriting "Jane Eyre." Consider this a work in progress.

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com