Staging Charlotte Bronte’s gothic romance outdoors in a fractured English summer is a risky business; not only must the characters convey the tortured anxieties of forbidden love in the candle-lit shadows and attics of Thornfield Hall, they must compete with cackling seagulls, traffic sirens up Dyke Road and gusting seabreezes.

Chapterhouse Theatre, formed 18 years ago specifically to perform in the open-air gave it their best shot and, in the crucial moments, succeeded. Laura Turner’s adaption of Jane Eyre omitted most of Lowood and focussed on the Cinderella fantasy of plain governess whose spirit matched that of her hero even when her looks and breeding did not.

Jane’s famous tirade against the class and gender strictures of the time was pure Bronte, clear and Northern, an equal at that moment for the very dashing Rochester whose voice always carried perfectly above the roar of the wind.

It wasn’t always easy to hear Jane or Mrs. Fairfax despite their bravest efforts. A small cast doubled brilliantly, especially a flighty Adele/ flirtatious Blanche Ingrams, and just often enough, minimal props, plain set and mullioned backdrop enabled the imagination into the wilderness of Victorian Yorkshire and the ultimate love story.