CHARLOTTE Bronte’s Jane Eyre is one of the most famous, widely raid and critically acclaimed novels in the English language – it is also one of the most frequently adapted for stage and screen. A new play by Live Wire and Rough House theatre takes a different approach comes to the West Country on tour from 24th September.

The acclaimed production of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography asks how much did the oldest of the three writing Bronte sisters drew on her own life?

The play, and the tour, mark a significant and poignant anniversary in the writer’s life – 200 years ago in 1825, when Charlotte was only nine years of age, both her older sisters – Maria and Elizabeth – died of consumption, within weeks of each other.

As director Shane Morgan explains: “There is no doubt whatever that the devastating impact of Maria and Elizabeth’s deaths, at just 10 and 11 years old respectively, was key to the germination of the Jane Eyre whose orphaned heroine endures childhood loss, rejection and isolation as she embarks on her quest for familial love and somewhere to belong.”

Adapted by playwright Dougie Blaxland and produced by the same creative team who won the 2021 National Campaign for the Arts Award, Live Wire and Roughhouse Theatre’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography is a revival of the 2015 production that was hailed “a theatrical tour de force from a company with a rare gift for bringing classics to life with loyalty, energy and intrigue.”

Central to bringing Jane Eyre back to the stage 178 years after the novel’s original publication is what movement director Moira Hunt describes as “its compelling relevance for women in the 21st century”. She says: “Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre broke the mould of the Victorian female stereotype through its dramatisation of a woman of independent mind and means who refuses to be subservient in any way to her male counterparts.”

Alison Campbell, a graduate of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, reprises her role as Jane Eyre. She says:: “The revival of the production to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the death of Maria and Elizabeth Bronte is of great significance in honouring the extraordinary Bronte family as a whole and highlighting the creative genius that emerged in the face of tragedy.”

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography is at the Alma Tavern in Bristol on 24th September, Taunton’s Brewhouse Theatre on 27th September, The Marine, Lyme Regis, on 9th October, and the Ustinov Studio at Bath Theatre Royal from 13th to 15th October.