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“Jane Eyre”
Hamburg Ballet – John Neumeier
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
December 09, 2023

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2023 by Ilona Landgraf

Last December, John Neumeier announced that his then-new “Dona Nobis Pacem” would be his last choreography for the Hamburg Ballet. I was rightfully doubtful because the eighty-four-year-old did indeed schedule the premiere of yet another new creation – Epilogue” – for July 2024. With very few exceptions, the Hamburg Ballet’s purpose has been to present its artistic director’s oeuvre. In his farewell season, he at least allocated the other premiere to a foreign choreographer, the Zurich Ballet’s new artistic director, Cathy Marston. Her “Jane Eyre” received its Hamburg debut earlier this December. It’s an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous 1847 novel and was created for Northern Ballet in 2016 and later developed into a big-scale production for American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet.

In an interview printed in the program booklet, Marston reports having been surprised about the unexpected assignment by Neumeier and also hints as to why Neumeier might have chosen “Jane Eyre”.
She explained that her and Neumeier’s choreographic languages were connected, and the audience wouldn’t be confronted with an entirely unfamiliar world. She’s right; a glimpse of the ballet world that exists outside of the Neumeier bubble could have come as a shock to his faithful audience. “Jane Eyre”, however, could pass for an early Neumeier piece and is a safe bet in terms of style and content.
Brontë’s novel tells the life story of its heroine, Jane, from a first-person perspective. An orphaned girl, young Jane is sent away to a charity school by her resentful aunt. The school’s director, a clergyman, habitually mistreats and humiliates his students. Nevertheless, Jane stays at the school and transforms into a well-liked teacher. She applies for a job as a governess, which leads to her engagement at Thornfield Hall, an isolated mansion where she has to take care of the young girl, Adèle. It’s unclear whether Edward Rochester, the man of the house, is Adèle’s father, but in any case, he and Jane fall in love.
After Rochester plays some games (such as pretending to marry a pretty socialite) and Jane rescues him from a life-threatening bedroom fire, both confess their love. Their wedding is off, though, the moment when Rochester’s actual wife, Bertha Mason, bursts in. A mentally ill woman, Rochester has kept her locked in the mansion’s attic for years. The house fire and other occasional mysterious events were, come to find out, caused by her. Distraught upon discovering that Rochester is already married, Jane runs off, almost dies in the moor, and is rescued by another clergyman, St John Rivers. A practical-minded bachelor, he deems Jane an ideal wife to assist him on his missionary journey abroad.
But she takes to her heels again to finally reunite with her true love, Rochester. Rochester, in the meantime, has lost his mansion and eyesight to another fire set again by Bertha. Bertha was killed in the fire, leaving no obstacle to Jane marrying Rochester.

Taken out of its Victorian-era context, the story is a melodrama full of stereotypes and unlikely coincidences – romantic kitsch for some, world literature for others. How Marston shifted the focus to the story’s asset – the heroine’s unswerving strength – is an achievement in itself. She tells most of the story in retrospect, beginning with Jane’s flight through the moor. After having found shelter at the Rivers’ home, Jane recalls what happened before. Events begin to unfold in the present again once St John proposes to her.
The bedroom fire at Thornfield Hall was the weak spot in an otherwise cleverly constructed libretto. Lying on his pristine white bed (a bare platform without any signs of burn), Rochester appeared as if displayed in a shop window. The positioning of the bed and the excitement surrounding Jane’s wedding dress reminded me faintly of Cranko’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

Knowledge of the book (or a glance at the program) was helpful for understanding why Marston chose to throw the spotlight solely on Jane in the final moment while Rochester stayed behind, invisible in the deepening darkness. Jane came across as a martyr, but the scene actually refers to the novel’s last sentence, in which she directly addresses the readers, “Reader, I married him.”

Marston draws on a rich and nuanced vocabulary of movement that reveals the mechanics of the protagonists’ inner lives. Extensive pas de deux plumb the dense fabric of relationships. Group dances of the charity school students and the upper-class society expose the gulf between the everyday realities of different social classes. Movable set elements and the sparse use of props allow a quick narrative pace. A meager hillside on the backdrop as well as marbled and stone-colored side wings convey the austerity of heathland but also symbolize the harsh social order (set design by Patrick Kinmonth).

Life is hardly colorful or bubbly in Victorian England. All the more explosive are the attempts of Jane (Madoka Sugai) to bust this order. Her inner compass seemed fixed on something only she was aware of. Sometimes Jane fought like a suffocating person struggling for a liberating breath; sometimes she pulled herself together, enduring her hardship. Often, man-made rules, personified by a group of gray-clad men (Marston calls them D-Men), obstruct her aspirations. These men are also the harbingers of death for the charity school students, act as eerie candle holders at Thornfield Hall, and turn into dance partners of the oh-so-superior upper-class ladies.
Alexandr Trusch’s Edward Rochester was a fabulous Byronic hero whom fate sent on a rollercoaster ride to rock bottom. Especially impressive was Lin Zhang as the young girl Jane. She fought furiously against her malicious step-siblings and stoically endured the attacks of the school director, Mr. Brocklehurst (Alessandro Frola). A religious traditionalist, he deemed public naming and shaming apt to restore discipline, his sharp finger pointing at the supposed delinquents like a pistol. St John Rivers (Christopher Evans) was so full of missionary zeal that he failed to recognize Jane’s rejection. Her face had already turned waxy, but he dragged her under his arm toward a utopian destiny as if she were his prey.
Former principal dancer Silvia Azzoni returned on stage as the elderly Mrs Fairfax, Thornfield Hall’s prim housekeeper. Xue Lin portrayed the young socialite who Rochester pretended to marry. His disheveled, mentally ill wife, Bertha, was danced by Charlotte Larzelere. Hayley Page was her shuffling and often intoxicated minder. Page also doubled as Jane’s aunt. Lormaigne Bockmühl played the boisterous girl Adèle.

The tailor-made score (played by Nathan Brock and the Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg) combines music by Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and his sister Fanny Hensel with new compositions by Philip Feeney. It sometimes directed the atmosphere too obviously.

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