Brighton Fringe 2026

Jane Eyre

Brighton Little Theatre

Genre: Adaptation, classical, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Puppetry, Theatre

Venue: Brighton Little Theatre

Festival: Brighton Fringe

Low Down

Review

Two Jane Eyres? In May 2023 Brighton Little mounted an exceptional production of Polly Teale’s 2011 play Bronté, directed by Nettie Sheridan. Now Sheridan returns to direct the first of what would turn out to be a trio of plays by Teale, the latter two original, around the family. This though is a creative adaptation, based on Teale’s work with Helen Edmundson and Shared Experience. Brighton Little has always thrived with both dramatists, and Teale’s 1998 Charlotte Bronté’s Jane Eyre adapted by Teale is a smash.

Here Bertha Mason emerges as Eyre’s other self, shadowing, goading, tormenting and mirroring her. Directed and choreographed by Sheridan, assisted by Hannah Sumner till May 16, it then transfers to BOAT from 10—13 June. Oh, and it’s BLT’s 800^th production: drinks are on the house. The souvenir programme covers the last 86 years

Teale’s telling and the choreography here make this a kinetic experience in leaps and fluid silences. Storytelling’s both telegraphed and detailed, and settles enough for us to grasp each stage of it. A tiny snip of the kindly teacher at Lowood, and a more serious one of Jane Eyre’s inheritance – which enables Jane to repay kindness and live independently, which Teale could have touched in – is the only flaw in this otherwise remarkably full account in two hours, plus interval. That interval comes at a blissful moment, before the storm. Just nine actors mostly multi-role and render this a compact whirligig of fate, love and redemption.

Izzy Boreham, who struck gold with Emily Jenkins’ miraculous two-hander Bobby & Amy last year, is Jane Eyre. Both truthful and idiomatic (downright Yorkshire, nuanced enough to seem genteel yet provincial) Boreham is transfixing. The way she expresses Jane Eyre’s feelings, her desolation, brief joys, vehement rejection tearing her to pieces, is likely to make the tears start. She’s outstanding. And sometimes funny. She also reacts seamlessly to those around her.

Boreham’s also reunited with Jimmy Schofield from Bobby & Amy, though he multi-roles consummately as brat cousin John Reed, a decent teacher at Lowood, a snorting horse, Richard Mason (Bertha’s brother) and an Old Man. His fourth production with BLT, he’s soon off to Rose Bruford drama college and great things. Here he snorts a farewell.

Boreham’s initially twinned instead in an almost silent role with Polly Jones, a Rose Bruford graduate and playing Emily in that 2023 Bronté, as well as in the superb 2024 Little Women as Jo. Jones proves her eloquence extends to silence, mime and ferocity. Though virtually silent Jones burns her way through the part. Her moments with Boreham early on, both encouraging and holding her back as their twin child selves face odious Mrs Reed, are the most innovative elements in the play. Though this filters down as she turns antagonist. At certain points she shadows Jane’s sexual and repressed self, and at others seems to blend with her: a vicarious consummation.

But Teale also details Jane’s early suffering with Mrs Reed and later at Lowood school. Several intense scenes then leap as Jane’s suddenly a young teacher looking to be a governess. Some of the most theatrical moments spring from the fluid dissolves of storytelling here.

Joseph Bentley helms the only other single role apart from Boreham’s Jane. His Rochester is a revelation. Like Boreham and others he exudes vocal clarity, though his voice is cut-through, regal and altogether thrilling. Bentley, who’s returned to acting more recently, scored as Branwell in Bronté, and here working with Sheridan he creates his finest performance yet. He’s almost unrecognizable from his former lighter-voiced self. He manages to warm and infuriate, tease and charm. He inhabits Rochester’s edgy defensive pride, so easily assumed as scorn. Yet his Rochester is clearly redemptive.

As Bessie the tough-tender maid to Mrs Reed, Katie Ford adds to several recent roles where she keeps impressing. Her Grace Poole is appropriately stony, her Blanche Ingram haughty and even hoity, and she’s Diana Rivers: one of the cousins Jane didn’t know she had (and nor do we unless we know the book or every other adaptation). Here she can radiate natural warmth.

In this Ford’s twinned with Evie McGuire’s joyous sister Mary Rivers, though apart from maid Abigail (also twinned with Ford’s Bessie) McGuire enjoys striking contrasts. As the seraphic almost too-good Helen Burns, the schoolgirl who befriends Jane, she’s unworldly and deeply affecting as she falls asleep forever. Moments later though she explodes as Adele, Rochester’s ward, the French girl jabbering French and pirouetting through the play. McGuire’s Adele is never still, a wild contrast to Helen; a force of nature, only slightly tamed by finally reading a book.  McGuire lights up the stage and even alone is distinguished.

There’s strong performances from Cathy Byrne, who’s worked with Sheridan’s Identity Theatre (usually a larger ensemble) but here making her BLT debut. She frosts up the forbidding Mrs Reed in black, spitting out malediction to the end. Indeed you wonder why Jane, usually so forthright can’t summon up a little more riposte at the end. As Mrs Fairfax, more white-dressed, Byrne’s all care and warning, occasionally hard-talking and home-truthing (incredulous that Rochester has chosen Jane, yet also anxious).

Steven Adams, responsible for the set and much else, burls through a thoroughly unpleasant tyrant of a Mr Brocklehurst, whom you feel has killed Helen Burns and others through sheer callous neglect. As Lord Ingram he’s all deluded bluster for his daughter the haughty Blanche; a blathery Clergyman about to conduct a marriage. And finally as St John Rivers, exuding the man’s lack of feeling for Jane in a way Teale brings out uniquely. It isn’t that Jane doesn’t feel she can love St John, so much as she knows he could never be attached to her; and she would be drawn irresistibly to him and be shut out. Which induces a more ambivalent crisis, with less predictable outcome. It’s here too that the voice calling Jane back is suddenly amplified through Bentley, Jones and others: a striking moment as they tug at Boreham.

And Rosalind Caldwell’s Pilot the dog is something else: fluent in puppetry – she also floats a giant dragonfly – her stagecraft is both affecting and would be stage-stealing if Caldwell wasn’t so consummate in dissolving herself to the action.

Liz Ryder-Weldon’s music and sound design (again with Hannah Sumner) corrals late Beethoven string quartets (on his own illness), Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 Fauré’s ‘Apres un Reve’ (again appositely chosen) and two mildly modern string pieces for nightmares. Steven Adams’ taut set frames this backdrop in wood, both suggesting various interiors with a stage-right room locked in where for much of the action Betha Mason is penned. The set enjoys a spectacular reveal but is also lit exquisitely by Beverley Grover who also operates it. It’s a strikingly atmospheric yet versatile set. Much use is made of the aisle exits too. The costumes especially dresses by Colin Rogers-Marsh and Myles Locke are equally striking: no more so than the contrast of Janes Eyre’s tight pale blue with Mason’s plunging scarlet. There’s special props like Ed Berridge’s dragonfly, certainly a singular addition of Teale’s, teasing out a theme.

There’s other fine effects: stage smoke, use of candles and light filter to mimic fire and lighting sequences precisely. Most of all though this is a heart-stopping production. The sinewy and sensuous storytelling, the new elements as Jane and Bertha encircle each other, take the strange to the eerie: a sisterhood of repressed desire released into another life, a doppelganger where one must die. It’s Bertha’s tragedy as well as Jane’s triumph. Teale has released the daemons, but Sheridan’s ensemble has delivered Jane Eyre’s feeling to a pitch remarkable even for BLT. Boreham and Bentley are overwhelming. My companion said simply. “This is so much better than most of West End rubbish I see. Can’t it go beyond BOAT?” And indeed BOAT is where Sheridan hopes to release the dance too. It’s avbslutely worth seeing at BLT, with its atmosphere and intimacy. And again at a twilight or sunny BOAT.  Outstanding.

Stage Manager Charlotte Atkinson, Properties Vicky Horder, Lighting and Sound Operation Tina Sitko, Costumes Colin Rogers-Marsh, Myles Locke, Dragonfly Design and Build Ed Berridge, Photography Miles Davies. Design Holly Everett.

Special thanks to Stanmer House, Paul Sheridan, Joanna Ackroyd, Pearl and all staff and volunteers at BOAT.

Published May 10, 2026May 11, 2026 by Simon Jenner