UNDERDOG: THE OTHER OTHER BRONTË★★★★
National Theatre until May 25 Tickets: 020 3989 5455
The three sisters of Sarah Gordon’s new play are the Battling Brontës – Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
Attempting to write themselves out of poverty, they ended up competing with each other for fortune, if not fame, employing male pseudonyms. In a typically kick-ass Northern Stage production, director Natalie Ibu brings the women to vivid, raucous life with a wild garden that rises to reveal a bare stage beneath, music hall knockabout, coconut halves for horses hooves and audience engagement.
“What’s your favourite Brontë novel?” challenges scarlet-clad Charlotte (Gemma Whelan) on her entrance as we wonder whether to risk saying Wuthering Heights instead of Jane Eyre.
After Branwell’s (James Phoon) death, Charlotte bullies youngest sister Anne (Rhiannon Clements), belittling her attempt at being a governess for the ghastly children of the local gentry.
Emily (Adele James) acts as mediator between the two. They act out parts of their novels – the sequence dramatising Anne’s Gothic romance The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is hilarious. The real test comes when London publishers react to the idea women are capable of writing novels.
Arresting performances from Whelan as deeply unsympathetic Charlotte, Clements as the independent-but-withdrawn Anne and James as the stoical Emily keep the spirited play alight. It uncovers the flesh and blood females behind the Brontë myth while interrogating entrenched patriarchy in a broad satire punctuated with amusing anachronistic dialogue.