A character faces the audience at the beginning of a play and starts narrating the story--it's the most overused device in modern theater, a refuge for authors who find it easier to tell rather than dramatize. But when Jane Eyre, the heroine of Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel, presents herself at the start of a Broadway show and addresses the "gentle audience," it is oddly refreshing. It promises something we rarely see in theater these days: old-fashioned, Victorian, what-happens-next? storytelling.
And for much of the way, that's exactly what Jane Eyre, the new Broadway musical, delivers. Written and co-directed (along with Scott...