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| Playbill Volume 117, Number 3 - March 2001 |
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| Eyre Male Delivery from A Theatregoer's Notebook Ask James Barbour how it feels to be a matinee idol, and he says he's just an actor. Still, he strikes a vivid romantic image as Jane Eyre's Rochester. Vivid, in fact, is a problem: "When I ask people what version of Jane Eyre they saw, they say the William Hurt or the Orson Welles or the Geaorge C. Scott. They don't remember who played Jane. It's a blessing and a curse" -- a blessing that Rochester casts such a vast shadow; a curse that people, because of these actors, think he's in his late forties/early fifties. "In the book," says Barbour, "who has hit the Bronte four times, "he's 38 and Jane's 18." Barbour spends the first half-hour of the show backstage -- not brooding, as you might think, but keeping a journal -- then takes charge as the troubled master of Thornfield Hall, setting hearts aflutter. The proof is in the Stage Door Janes he's attracting. "They call themselves Eyreheads. The more stoic ones are Janeans." His Broadway roles keep growing darker -- from Cyrano's drunken Jodelet to Carousel's Billy Bigelow to the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. And now this. "I think it's my statue [6'3"], my dark hair and that big voice." [It's also his audition song: 1776's Molasses to Rum."] His sunny side he saves for the other coast. "The ironic thing is, when I'm in L.A., most of my work comes in half-hour comedies." Out there, Rochester's funny. ~ Harry Haun |