Bronte - review

Kate Bush’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights inspired by the genius that was Emily Bronte and written over a hundred years after she died underlines the impact the three Bronte sisters had on the world and are still having.

Jane Eyre is the most - read book in the English language after the bible, and Wuthering Heights is still hugely popular. It is this incredible legacy that inspired Shared Experiences’ fascinating production Bronte that is playing at Richmond Theatre this week.

The company directed by Nancy Meckler combines a powerful stage presence with the intimacy of a radio play bringing an intensely emotional performance that gripped the audience. The story of the Bronte family is told exposing their tragic lives touched by death with the loss of their mother at an early age.

The writer Polly Teale cleverly combines fact and fiction exposing the soul of their inner lives which ran free in their writing and provided an escape from the parsonage drudgery. All the Brontes struggled in the real world trying and failing to hold down careers as either tutors or governesses.

In shining a light on their fictional works insightful glimpses can be gained, for example the parallel between Jane Eyre’s love for Edward Rochester and Charlottes infatuation with her Brussels tutor Constantin Heger.

The play is extremely well researched and beautifully written genuinely conveying a deeper understanding of the harsh realities of the Brontes’ lives and their thwarted hopes and dreams. Branwell’s slow decline as his world collapsed into an opiate sea of laudanum is most sympathetically portrayed.

Great trouble is taken to set the piece firmly in the grip of the industrial revolution with its grey, grim textile mills counterpointing with the wild and craggy heather-clad moors.

This is a deeply thought - provoking piece that is a must for literary souls alike that will have you reaching for your copy of Jane Eyre and wondering at the rare genius of three sisters who haunt and perplex us still.

Liz Colbert