VILLETTE. To 12 November.
Scarborough
VILLETTE
by Charlotte Bronte adapted by Lisa Evans
Stephen Joseph Theatre (The Round) To 12 November 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 12 Nov 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS:01723 370541
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 October
Deep passions brought to life in an unusually successful adaptation.
Adapter Lisa Evans has made the 19th century women’s novel her repertoire, her versions working particularly well in the spaces where they were premiered, such as the traverse of Birmingham Rep’s Studio for characters’ voyaging between the 2 houses of Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Here, the Stephen Joseph’s Round fits movement work introduced by Frantic Assembly boys Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett on the dark, spare wood-floor set where designer Philip Witcomb has created an apt space for English heroine Lucy Snowe during her work as a private school teacher in the title town, modelled on Brussels.
Though Villette is Charlotte Bronte’s last (many say finest) novel, it’s the work of a 36-year old, passionately understanding Lucy’s unfulfilled desires and haunting demons (both interior feelings and the trio of pupils encountered here). Lucy’s story develops through external storms, half-perceived understandings and various antagonisms, her love fastening then loosening its grip on a tall, handsome Doctor then the bearded, initially unfriendly-seeming tutor. It would be Mills & Boon but for the depth of Lucy and the comprehension of how those around affect, and afflict, her.
With each of the 3 stage entrances at the Stephen Joseph topped by a small Gothic porch, and as a teacher’s desk or bench rises from the floor for a scene, the space is set for Graham and Hoggett’s restlessly repeating patterns, and a stylisation which turns simple stage movement into the sense of a strange town’s busy streets or provides the patterned stillness of a girls’ dormitory, its sleeping bodies fuelling up energy to become tomorrow’s torments.
If there’s a problem, it’s that the adaptation needs to include key moments spread out in a novel, making for a near indigestion of mini-climaxes. Yet, with Georgina Lamb giving present-tense urgency to Lucy’s dilemmas and distresses, and strong work all around from Rachel Atkins’ stern, often disapproving school-owner, Saskia Butler as a precocious flirt, Elizabeth Hill and Sarah Manton as pupils from polite society hell plus Mark Healy and Stephen Ventura as contrasting male presences in Lucy’s existence, this is a pacily successful dramatisation .
Lucy Snowe: Georgina Lamb
Ginevra: Saskia Butler
Madame Beck: Rachel Atkins
Paul Emmanuel: Stephen Ventura
Dr John: Mark Healy
Mrs Bretton/Mme Walravens/Blanche: Elizabeth Hill
Polly/Virginie: Sarah Manton
Director: Laurie Sansom
Designer: Philip Witcomb
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Movement: Scott Graham, Steven Hoggett
Sound: Steven Hoggett, Ben Vickers
Assistant director: Elly Green
2005-11-02 11:19:14