The Mad Woman In The Attic

Polly Teale’s award-winning play _After Mrs Rochester_ was performed at Birmingham’s Old Rep Theatre and ran for two days from the 26th May. It told the complicated and extraordinary life of Jean Rhys, the novelist who wrote the critically acclaimed 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea. The novel was written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and famously showed the perspective of Mr Rochester’s wife, the hidden ‘mad woman in the attic’.

The Birmingham School of Acting’s production was outstanding and managed to capture perfectly the stifling claustrophobia of Jean Rhys’s childhood in the West Indies, her isolation at being sent to a strict school in England and her later excitement at running away and becoming a chorus girl.

_After Mrs Rochester_ is cleverly staged so that an elderly Jean Rhys is shown looking back at her younger self and who speaks with sadness at how her life moved from one disaster to another. Throughout the performance there was also a ‘mad woman’ present on stage who shouted, screamed and wildly threw herself around to show how Jean Rhys’s demons were constantly being repressed and resurfaced.

Mary-Kate Arnold was perfectly cast as the younger Jean Rhys and was especially powerful at showing her descent into alcoholism, prostitution and adulterous affairs. Several of the cast members played multiple characters and adopted flawless accents and Ken Dillon and Vanessa White in particular brought terrific energy to the stage.

The Birmingham School of Acting will be showing productions of _The Mill on the Floss, Dead Man’s Cell Phone_ and _Playhouse Creatures_ throughout June and July at the Old Rep Theatre and the Patrick Centre (Birmingham Hippodrome). Don’t miss them: student tickets are a bargain at £5.