Review: Jane Eyre Wasn’t a Whore, Edfringe

Anne Brauer, aspiring actor, has a problem. Well, two problems: everyone in New York City is casting insanely off-beat Brönte adaptations taking place in the wild west, or with vampires, or as a happy-clappy musical. And she’s fallen hard for the reader who feeds her the lines during each audition, but she can’t tell if he likes her back. 

Brauer is a die-hard Brönte fan, able to recite long passages of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall at will (and she, in fact, does so at moments of particular emotional intensity throughout the show, just as songs are where we learn what everybody’s feeling during a musical.) Cavalier treatment of her favourite literature really gets under Anne’s skin, as does the enigmatic Graham, who she describes as “looking like all the characters from Book of Mormon put together.” She minutely analyses every detail of their conversations, obsessively trying to elicit meaning from every word, every look, every gesture. Her friend Emily, whose own dating goal is to hook up with a guy she doesn’t really find attractive for just long enough to get invited to an upcoming yacht party, doesn’t get Brauer’s intensity of feeling for a guy who hasn’t even touched her on the arm yet, but she nevertheless acts as a non-judgemental shoulder to cry on. With determined optimism only cracking slightly at the corners, Brauer insists that this is her “year of no distractions” when she’ll go on more auditions than ever, only to find reminders of Graham everywhere she doesn’t want him.

Carly Polistina, playing Brauer and all the show’s parts, has an explosive manic energy with an infectious likability. She has a particular strength in giving a ‘beauty contestant hearing she’s in second place’ face at the conclusion of each unsuccessful audition. She keeps the show lively with her character embodiment, each of whom has a distinctive stance, expression and accent. She is held back a little by slightly reaching for the lines at times, a bit of stiffness where we can see her finding her place in the script, but it’s early days in this run, and this may ease out. She’s certainly never boring to watch, keeping momentum up through the hour. 

The staging is a bit of a mixed bag: there’s a lot of fun rushing about, particularly when Polistina joins us for a confessional moment in the audience at one point, but it’s unclear why asides using a microphone are different from the rest of the straight-to-audience pieces throughout, and getting back and forth to the mic slackens the pace a bit. There’s a rather funny visual gag on the screen near the end which could possibly work even better with a bit of quick-change action onstage, making the most of Polisitina’s high-energy switching between characters; it would certainly give her more flexibility in that section’s delivery. But we are in a function room above a pub, and it’s a free show, so ultimately the production team has done well with limited resources. Plucky, indeed.

Jane Eyre Wasn’t a Whore will play especially well with die-hard Brontë fans (reader, I among them) who know all the in-references, but it could equally introduce a generation of heartsick comedy fans to the fact that 150-year-old novels have the perfect advice for when he/she/they won’t text you back. Part of the PBH Free Fringe, so have your shillings ready at the end of the performance.

Written & Performed by Carly Polistina
Directed by Alexandra Brokowski

Jane Eyre Was Not A Whore plays at The Loft @ The Outhouse Bar until Saturday 23 August