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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Celebrated sisters still a mysteryBrontë
Grange Players Grange Playhouse, Walsall **** AUTHOR Polly
Teale has penned a powerful, puzzling play about Emily, Anne and
Charlotte Brontë, the three spinster sisters who managed to write
remarkable stories about the power of love – but it is a play that does
not explain how they did it. Yes, it draws parallels
between them and some of their characters – who are for the most part
not permitted to stray beyond the confines of the cage in which they
intermittently appear, and we see that their dissolute brother Branwell
was also an unwitting inspiration – but the power of their writing
remains a mystery. Director Claire Armstrong Mills and a fine
company may well be as bemused as the rest of us – but if they are, it
does not show. This is a fine production: that missing fifth star is a
reflection on the play, not its presentation.
The cast come with admirable aplomb to a wordy
work, full of time-shifts, and which includes characters from the Brontë
novels – four of them are represented here – shown as reflections of the
women who created them. When Rochester (Adam Worton) appears, Charlotte
Brontë becomes his Jane Eyre, for instance. Liz Webster is Emily, strong and positive; Liz
Plumpton is the troubled Charlotte; and Laura Chinn is Anne, the
specially kindly one whose talents do not match those of her remarkable
sisters. Together, they provide an absorbing study of their kind of
literary life in Yorkshire's Haworth Parsonage. It is not their fault
that is is also unavoidably bemusing,
Rob Laird is in fine form as their brother – a
brother who evinces a distinctly and disturbingly unbrotherly attitude
to Charlotte until their clergyman father, the splendid David Stone,
arrives in a welter of Irishisms and clerical shock to call a halt. Adam
Worton, in addition to his responsibilities to Rochester, is also the
curate and Charlotte's tutor. Then there are the other characters from the
books: the programme calls them The Ghosts. Becki Jay has an innocent
charm as the white-garbed Cathy (Wuthering Heights) and
distinctly lascivious leanings as Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester
(Jane Eyre), in alarming red. Rob Laird is Heathcliff
(Wuthering Heights) and Arthur Huntington (The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall). All told, Polly Teale has come up with a worryingly clever confection. Some time before it ended, I was too far gone to have any idea whether all those strange noises that emerged late-on from backstage were part of the production of simply a sustained intrusion. To 20-11-10
Turning the page
AFTER watching Polly Teale's play about
the famous Bronte sisters, many people in the audience probably go home
wondering just what caused the three women to become such brilliant
authors. Living hum-drum lives in a remote parsonage on
the Yorkshire moors, under the restrictive influence of a domineering
father, hardly seems the ideal situation to inspire the imagination, but
Emily, Charlotte and Anne rose above it all. The play, almost devoid of humour, examines the
years between 1825 and 1855, and the only love interest comes with the
tentative approach - through father - from timid curate Arthur Bell
Nichols (Adam Worton) for Charlotte, though later there is a surprise
marriage. Costumes and the well designed set, with a screen
at the rear to show pictures of the area, along with dates, certainly
gives the play a sense of realism, and the acting is superb. Liz Plumpton (Charlotte), Liz Webster (Emily) and
Laura Chinn (Anne) are totally convincing, with David Stone impressive
as their strict clergyman father, Patrick. The most dramatic scenes comes when the women's
drunken, under-achieving brother Barnwell (Rob Laird) has a violent
hands on row with Charlotte. Becki Jay also does well as the ghosts of Cathy
from Wuthering Heights and Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester from Jane
Eyre. Directed and produced by Claire Armstrong Mills
and Rosemary Manjunath, Bronte runs to 20-11-10 Paul Marston |
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