Review: We Are Three Sisters *****

BLAKE Morrison set out to weave a tale about the true lives of the brilliant Bronte sisters around the framework of the Chekhov play Three Sisters, which is thought to have been influenced by the Russian writer’s reading of the life and work of the extraordinary family living in the wilds of Haworth.
By Sheena Hastings at the Viaduct Theatre, Halifax
Published 16th Sep 2011, 10:46 BST

While the Russian sisters longed to escape the countryside and go to Moscow, though, the Bronte women were more circumspect about the lure of London and were passionately attached to their father, brother and village home.

The writer here may take certain liberties with chronology, but he is justified in doing so. He brings together important episodes and people who passed through the writers’ lives into a timeline spanning only a few months, to help explain the Bronte women’s hopes, aspirations, intellectual preoccupations and attitudes.

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Plundering the family letters, their published works and material written about them, Morrison has pulled off a warm, mesmerising depiction of what made the Brontes tick, and one which has the ring of truth about it.

Emily is pale, strange, self-doubting, mistrustful of the world and given to bursts of poetic recitation. Charlotte is practical and bustling, but also burning with ideas and unrequited passions. Anne is a glowing ingenue who is almost embarrassingly open to love. She also has a witty command of the withering one-liner, with her views of the shortcomings of curates and has great sport at the expense of Jane Austen.

The sisters are shown to have an intense bond, a great work ethic and a fierce desire to leave a mark on the world through the stories they weave by flickering candlelight unbeknownst to their father and drink and drug-addled brother Branwell. The sisters’ ideas about life, love, the lot of the working man and woman and biggies such as ‘why are we here?’ are discussed and tested, with the help of visits to their home by a doctor, a lovesick curate, a teacher and Branwell’s revolting married paramour Mrs Robinson.

Their view of that liaison appears to be ‘if this is real- life love, we’d prefer fiction’.

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Morrison the poet has imbued his script with moments of real beauty, and he’s done the Bronte sisters a great service in shining new light on the hearts and minds that created lasting beacons of English literature.

Northern Broadsides are at their best here, creating a production that both transfixes the mind and melts the heart, with a wonderful, committed ensemble deserving equal plaudits all round.

• To September 17. Then 18-22 Oct Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough; 25-29 Oct The Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond; 2-5 Nov Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield and 22-26 Nov York Theatre Royal.