Huju opera ’Moonlight Shadow' brings 'Jane Eyre' to Shanghai stage

The polished revised edition of Huju opera Moonlight Shadow, produced by the Shanghai Changning District Huju Opera Heritage Preservation Center, premiered on Tuesday night at the Hongqiao Art Center.

It adapts Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre into a Shanghai folk-opera performed in Shanghainese, the intangible cultural heritage that bears distinctive Haipai cultural genes.

Belonging to Huju's iconic "suit-and-cheongsam" drama genre, the story is reset in early‑20th‑century Shanghai, a city deeply embedded in the Jiangnan cultural sphere. It traces orphan governess Feng Mingyue and Lu Peiyan, master of Linhu Manor. The pair goes through conflicts and misunderstandings before developing a sincere love built on mutual dignity and equality. The adaptation preserves the spiritual core of the original novel while infusing strong regional Shanghai and Jiangnan artistic charm.

Helmed by Yi Tianfu, professor at Shanghai Theatre Academy, this upgraded version comes four years after its 2022 debut. National first-class actor Wang Bin takes on the role of Lu, while Zhu Zhen — the city's young Huju-opera intangible-cultural-heritage inheritor — plays heroine. The cast has refined vocal tunes, stage visuals, and character interactions to achieve more nuanced psychological expression.

"Onstage, every gesture, glance, and pause must convey unspoken inner thoughts, rather than merely reciting lines," Wang said. "For this revival, we have dug far deeper into subtle, progressive emotional shifts between our two characters to avoid flat performances."

Zhu pointed out the real-world dilemma facing Shanghainese inheritance. "Many young Shanghai residents can understand the dialect, yet feel too shy to speak it," she said. "Live theater gives us a vivid, public channel to hand down this precious linguistic heritage to younger generations."

Shanghai Changning District Huju Opera Heritage Preservation Center has long followed Huju's classic tradition of adapting Western literary works. Equipped with Chinese subtitles to cross linguistic boundaries, the show draws rising numbers of young theater-goers.