A Noise Within follows their spectacular reimagining of Macbeth with a solid production of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, albeit not as effectively staged or as ideally cast as I might have wished.

One would probably have to have been living under a rock since childhood not to have some inking of Brontë’s groundbreaking gothic novel’s pair of mismatched lead characters or the dark and mysterious Derbyshire mansion inside which this romantic tale unfolds.

Jane Eyre is after all widely considered one of the greatest English-language novels ever written, and even if you’ve never read it, you’re likely to have seen at least one of its myriad film and TV adaptations, most notably the 1943 Joan Fontaine/Orson Wells starrer or its most recent big-screen rendering with Mia Wasikowska as orphaned governess Jane and Michael Fassbender as a particularly hunky Edward Rochester, whose French ward Adèle Jane has been hired to tutor.

Elizabeth Williamson’s 2020 stage adaptation has Jane (Jeanne Syquia) narrating her autobiographical tale, skipping over her unfortunate childhood save a brief Act Two flashback and instead opening the action with her arrival at a Thornfield Hall presided over by gray-haired, black-clad housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (Deborah Strang).

Enigmatic only begins to describe master of the house Mr. Rochester (Frederick Stuart), nor does the word mysterious do justice to the mansion he calls home, one whose silence is occasionally disrupted by eerie laughter coming from who knows where within.

And what about the fire that suddenly ignites inside Edward’s bedroom one moonless night, lit by who knows whom?

If all this sounds a bit like Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca or anything Victoria Holt wrote back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was after all Charlotte Brontë who started it all back in 1847, and one of the pleasures of both Brontë’s novel and Williamson’s compacted stage adaptation is discovering how genre tropes like mysterious heroes, heroines in distress, gloomy castles, claustrophobic bedchambers, supernatural phenomena, long-buried secrets, madness, and more first saw the light of day (or the darkness of night if you will).

And for the most part A Noise Within succeeds in bringing all of this to life.

Director Geoff Elliott has elicited fine performances from Syquia as an appropriately plucky Jane and Stuart as an effectively enigmatic Mr. Rochester, though neither is as age-appropriate for their roles (Jane is supposed to be 19 and Rochester no more late-30s) as would be ideal.

Six featured actors embody a whopping seventeen supporting characters in all, with A Noise Within treasures Strang and Trisha Miller going from somber (as Mrs. Fairfax and Grace Poole) to flighty (as society matron Lady Ingram and her belle-of-the-ball daughter Blanche), Stella Bullock featured as both Adèle and a prepubescent Jane, and Bert Emmett, Julia Manis, and Riley Shanahan playing every single remaining role among them.

It’s the kind of cost-cutting approach contemporary regional theaters love, albeit one that works better here with female characters more easily transformed by costumes and wigs than with male characters whose distinctions are less obvious.

Frederica Nascimento’s scenic design takes us to multiple locales in and around and far afield from Thornfield Hall, though after Macbeth’s breathtaking production design, this one comes as a bit of a letdown, and it doesn’t help audience alertness that multiple scenes take place in just one part of the stage leaving surrounding areas in virtual darkness. (No complaints whatsoever about Angela Balogh Calin’s period costumes, Tony Valdes’s accompanying makeup and wig designs, Stephen Taylor’s abundance of props, or Robert Oriol’s mood-enhancing original music and sound design.)

Natalie Frost, Andrew Huber, Kaitlin Large, Garrett Marshall, and Zoe Stohler are understudies.

Andrea Odinov is dialect coach. Miranda Johnson-Haddad is dramaturg. Taylor is technical coordinator. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

If nothing else, A Noise Within’s Jane Eyre lends itself perfectly to student matinees that introduce local children and teens to the magic of live theater and in this case, of a classic novel likely to be on many an English teacher’s must-read list. As for the grownups, if you’re a Charlotte Brontë fan, Jane Eyre will likely be right up your alley.

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena. Through April 20. Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30. Saturdays at 2:00 and 7:30, and Sundays at 2:00
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
April 10, 2025
Photos: Craig Schwartz

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: A Noise Within, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Williamson, Los Angeles Theater Review