Independent spirit

Anne Brontë's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a classic of feminist literature. Deborah McAndrew tells Yvette Huddleston how she adapted it for the stage.
NEW ADAPTION: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall opens at York Theatre Royal this week.Picture: Richard Davenport.NEW ADAPTION: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall opens at York Theatre Royal this week.Picture: Richard Davenport.
NEW ADAPTION: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall opens at York Theatre Royal this week.Picture: Richard Davenport.

An underrated classic of feminist literature, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, published in 1848, was a book ahead of its time. The narrative features mystery, intrigue and romance but at its heart is the story of a woman fleeing an abusive marriage and asserting her independence.

The novel opens as a mysterious young widow, Helen Graham, arrives in an isolated Yorkshire village with her young son and takes up residence as the tenant of the rundown estate of Wildfell Hall. As the locals try to discover more about her, she becomes the subject of much gossip and speculation. Gilbert Markham, a local famer, is intrigued by Helen – she is intelligent, independent and creative, attempting to earn a living as an artist – and he gradually falls in love. Helen, however, is torn betweeen her attraction to Markham and the dark secrets of her troubled past.

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It is a gripping, thought-provoking story and next week it will take to the stage when a new adaptation by Deborah McAndrew opens at York Theatre Royal.

An accomplished playwright in her own right, McAndrew also has an excellent track record as an adapter of other people’s work – credits include Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and most recently Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, a Northern Broadsides production which is currently touring the UK.

The opportunity to adapt a Brontë novel appealed to McAndrew, as did the chance of working with director Elizabeth Newman again with whom she had previously collaborated on a Bolton Octagon production of David Copperfield. When Newman rang her two years ago to suggest they work on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall together, McAndrew was delighted. “Having grown up in Yorkshire, the Brontës are in my DNA,” she says. “I read Charlotte’s novels and Emily’s Wuthering Heights very early but I didn’t come to Anne’s work until a bit later when I was in my twenties.”

She says she remembers reading Anne’s first novel Agnes Grey and being impressed by how impassioned it was. “She was very angry about a lot of things to do with the situation of women and particularly impoverished educated women – a lot of it was based on her own experiences as a governess – and she revisits those arguments in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”.

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One of the most remarkable things about the novel is the way in which Brontë communicates her forthright views on gender equality and self-determination novel while maintaining the reader’s interest through its totally compelling narrative arc.

“Although it is very radical and feminist and an exceptional achievement for a woman of Anne’s class and experience, at the same time it is a romantic novel,” says McAndrew. “And it is quite conventional in many ways, but I think that is its strength. It is not dry and it’s full of complex, well-rounded characters. She didn’t write a political pamphlet, she wrote a story.” The challenge for McAndrew, then, was to incorporoate all those elements into her adaptation and make the story work as an engaging piece of theatre. “You have to sort of swallow the novel whole and then bring it back out on stage,” she says. “ I have to think about what works for a modern audience – if they are going to be interested and engaged I have to hook them in and keep them but I have obeyed Anne’s structure. so throughout the first Act we don’t know who Helen is and Gilbert’s obsession with her grows. That is great for audiences who don’t know the book as they get drawn in. I have used my own box of tricks as a dramatist, so I’ve built the tension and the curiosity around her.”

Some characters have been cut, which is often necessary as large casts are generally unfeasible, and other technical aspects – such as editing long speeches and extending short scenes – have to be taken into consideration in order to make it work on stage. That is McAndrew’s craft and she is happy with the end result. “It feels like it exists in its own right as a play, it doesn’t feel like a novel on stage. ” Spending time with the book and bringing it to life for a theatre-going audience has been “a privilege” says McAndrew.

“It’s been a real labour of love. I grew up with the Brontës – not only their books but as women writers they were always going to be a great inspiration for me.”

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, York Theatre Royal April 26-May 6. yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

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