Q&A with the cast of the JANE EYRE Musical | post performance chat at Southwark Playhouse Elephant

MickeyJoTheatre

A post-performance Q&A featuring producer Adam Blanshay and the cast of the Jane Eyre musical at Southwark Playhouse Elephant. The discussio

Key takeaways

• Producer Adam Blanshay brought the show to the UK after being inspired by the original Toronto production from 30 years ago.
• The musical has been streamlined from a large-scale production of 30 actors and 17 musicians to a more intimate version with 11 actors and 2 musicians.

Main topics

• History of the Jane Eyre musical
• UK Premiere at Southwark Playhouse Elephant

Notable quotes

I was sort of so angry with my parents saying like, why are we going to see that? That's what I want to see.

Conclusion

The episode offers a deep dive into the passion and history behind thi

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Please can we welcome back to Speaker 5 (0:01) the stage the cast of Jim Eyre. Speaker 5 (0:12) I'm very curious about how everyone encountered this musical for the first time. And Adam, this is Adam the producer, everybody. We're going to start with you because you have a great story about this. Hi, everybody. Thank you for watching. Speaker 3 (0:25) Great show. I'm from Canada, where the show originated 30 years ago in Toronto. Speaker 3 (0:38) When you were a good boy or a girl, when your parents treated you to shows, you were taken to Toronto, where Merge Productions have five theaters. And they produced Jane Eyre originally 30 years ago. And I was on a trip to Toronto with my parents, and I saw Rhyme Time, and I saw Joseph, and I was really thrilled because Audie O'Donnell and Diane Osmond. But there was this amazing poster of this musical called J. Mayor with this incredible artwork and I was sort of so angry with my parents saying like, why are we going to see that? That's what I want to see. And it stuck on my radar and furious, furious later the show transferred to Broadway and I finally got to see it and loved it and it's, you know, I've been working as a... theater professional for 15 years and um nonetheless i still have these soundtracks that i continue to listen to just as a puncher as a friend as a as a fan uh and one of which is the original ballroom castleboy engineer and the original toronto castle from engineer and um i kind of went down this rabbit hole of like googling you know, shows and things that hadn't been to the UK. And lo and behold, Jair has gone with it to the UK and has since been rewritten from this original bar reproduction, which had 30 people on stage and an orchestra of 17 into a new version, which has 11 actors and a second musicians and the light bulb went off. And I'm like, who do I know? Who knows John Carradine and Paul Worden? Finally I'm Speaker 1 (2:24) in Speaker 3 (2:24) a zoo with them and we're talking and the opportunity presented itself and what was really really cool was that as we started to put it together and this is exactly where I wanted to bring the show initially. I wanted to create this sort of really special intimate chamber experience and this venue has a giant history of sort of creating shows and scaling them. Speaker 3 (2:50) But long story short as we're bringing this together Mirvish Productions who originated the show 30 years ago put together a business and we're bringing the show to the Playhouse and said we would love to be your partner which is really little because this sort of big, big, big Speaker 3 (3:09) very very mighty presence in Caine and worldwide theater, you know our partners in this program It's Speaker 5 (3:18) really special to be creating this with your groupers. So yeah, so Speaker 3 (3:21) that's that is the very long-winded story of how we got here but But I've loved the show since it was written. Speaker 5 (3:28) Which is really special I think because like we said in 30 years I mean, it's a gorgeous score and it had never come professionally to the UK and now it's here because you fell in love with it, love in musical theatre, I think that's really amazing. Yeah, Speaker 3 (3:42) I see, I love you, because I feel like you similarly, you're just such a fan of high level. You know, when you're Speaker 4 (3:50) a Speaker 3 (3:50) fan of musicals, this happens. So, yeah, Speaker 5 (3:54) thank you for being Speaker 3 (3:55) here. Speaker 5 (3:55) No worries, thank you for having me. Now we're going to pass the microphone down. I want to know everyone's first impressions of Jane Eyre the musical, whether you discovered it coming to this production or previously. Yeah, you know sitting listening to you then thinking how Speaker 4 (4:08) am I gonna Speaker 5 (4:08) follow that? I got an audition for a show called J-Drama No, I obviously have kind of come across the show before briefly But when it came through I've worked on like a few different adaptations of books and novels and they're always just so fantastic that I knew would be really really special when I wanted to know more and then obviously reading the script and kind of seeing actually the I have seen the version of the show before done but not professionally yeah and they did it at the Royal Academy of Music which Ben our musical director if that's worth a trade that I trained too and so I've seen it before so I knew how special the show was but it's been really kind of fun to see it adapted again now it's kind of you know changed some of the music and some of the structure and like it's just it's just magic so yeah it's been amazing to kind of see that transformation of the show Speaker 2 (5:01) My local theatre in 2015 had their summer show and I was like, oh my god it's going to be somewhere like Greece or like Hairspray or something cool Speaker 5