Stratford’s new play about the Bronte sisters disappoints, salvaged only by the performances

 

 

Stratford. — It’s only fair to emphasize that the Stratford Festival’s world premiere of Bronte: The World Without is at least partially salvaged by three sterling performances.

So kudos are in order for the collective effort of Beryl Bain, Jessica B. Hill and Andrea Rankin in trying to draw us into the 19^th Century world of the three Bronte sisters — Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

At the same time, it’s their misfortune to be marooned in a problematic production of a play that fails to get beyond the surface of a literary mystery that continues to intrigue. How did these daughters of a widowed Church of England cleric produce from the isolation of a Yorkshire parsonage some of English literature’s most enduring works?

Toronto playwright Jordi Mand’s reverence for the Bronte sisters is evident. So is her indignation over a 19^th Century culture that forced them initially to use male pseudonyms in order to get published at all.

However, her play needs more than a 21^st Century feminist sensibility to seize our attention. It’s amazing to encounter a stage work about the Brontes that seems so indifferent to their actual creative processes. Yes, there’s much about their efforts to get published, and the need to conceal their gender from an uncomprehending readership. And there is a measure of suspense when a large envelope arrives from a prospective publisher. It’s less bulky than it was when originally sent out, indicating that at least one submitted manuscript has been accepted while others have been returned. But which of the three sisters will be in luck?

The answer lays bare some of the stresses in the sisters’ relationship and provides the production with one of its few potent moments. But it also suggests a play more at ease with troubled family dynamics than with the interior worlds that led Charlotte Bronte to give us Jane Eyre; Emily to wrench that eerie, masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, out of her own loneliness and insecurities; and Anne to emerge with the lesser but still worthy achievements of  Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

That the sisters yearned for access to an outside world — seeing publication of their writings as an essential portal to freedom — is essential to the Bronte mythology. The play dutifully reminds us of the journeys afield — the Brussels tenure of Charlotte and Emily, that 1848 visit by Charlotte and Anne to London in order to reveal their actual identities to their publishers. They are germane to the issues the play is trying to address. But more than a reiteration of known fact is required in a dramatic piece with the aspirations of this one.

When it comes to the Brontes, the full truth can be elusive. Elizabeth Gaskell’s 19^th Century biography of Charlotte deliberately sidestepped some of the more delicate aspects of the family history. A century later, Margaret Lane’s The Bronte Story sought to deliver a fuller account but its author was also prepared to acknowledge the pitfalls. And Winifred Guerin’s much-admired biography of Emily was forthright about the challenges of exploring a secretive life.

The Bronte sisters, their sensibilities shaped by the lonely culture of Haworth parsonage and the surrounding moors, were able to allow their imaginations to take hold in order to write the novels they did. And because the lives of these three very private persons can still seem indistinct, a similar imaginative leap would seem to be required on the part of a dramatist or novelist seeking a foothold in this world. For example,  British novelist Robert Edric succeeded brilliantly a couple of years ago with Sanctuary, a compelling fictional glimpse into the tormented mind of Branwell Bronte, the dissolute son of the family.

The self-destructive Branwell is an offstage presence in Jordi Mand’s play. He’s the hidden menace here, an emotional and physical threat to the sisters’ well-being — possibly,  it is suggested, the inspiration for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Yet, what we do know about the Brontes suggests that Branwell scarcely qualifies for the role of  bogey man. So if we want a greater understanding of a complicated family dynamic, we won’t be getting it here.

What we do get is a household hard-up for money and three intellectually restless sisters desperate for literary recognition and the freedom and financial relief that hopefully will come with it. We get familial bonds and familial tension, petty jealousies and flickering neuroses. But although there is a poignantly written scene about Emily’s anguished response over the initial failure of Wuthering Heights, it’s amazing how references to this book, the only novel Emily ever wrote, or to Jane Eyre, seem almost perfunctory. Because the play seems to show little interest in the creative forces shaping two of the 19^th Century’s most famous literary achievements, it’s perhaps not surprising that it shows similar indifference towards the inner lives of the sisters themselves.

Yet there are performances that sustain our interest even as we despair of the material and the way it is staged. As Charlotte, Beryl Bain provides a striking portrait of fortitude and resilience in the face of adversity. Jessica B. Hill’s raw-nerved Emily is the most driven of the sisters and also, in this admirable performance, the most fragile and vulnerable. Andrea Rankin is Anne, the lesser light and aware of it: there’s a charming coltishness to her characterization, even a high-spirited giddiness, as she strives to emulate her sisters, but there’s also an underlying pathos.

What we never get is the essential strangeness of the Bronte story — a strangeness that , even after a century and a half can still tantalize. Set designer Narda McCarroll’s conception of Haworth Parsonage suggests a rose-hued cosiness  — nothing here to convey a claustrophobic existence relieved only by the fertile imaginations of the three daughters, nothing to indicate the bleakness of the surrounding moors.

Indeed, there is no real sense of being thrust into the past. The sisters make no attempts at Yorkshire accents — they sound like North Americans. And director Vanessa Porteous has dug up background pop music that is very much of today, jarringly inappropriate,  and a further barrier against entry into another time.

And again and again, both play and production shy away from the mysterious processes of creativity. Instead we’re offered the spectacle of Charlotte experiencing one of those cliche light-bulb epiphanies when the idea for Jane Eyre abruptly flashes into her mind and sends her rushing  to the writing desk: the scene shows the evening at its slickest and most hollow. There are also those peculiar quick-action moments — rather like a movie running at the wrong speed — when the sisters are feverishly scratching away with their quill pens, ludicrously racing through entire pages in mere seconds. It’s cartoon time, folks. But the Roadrunner is more fun.

 

(Bronte continues at Stratford’s Stdio Theatre to Oct 19. Ticket information at stratfordfestival.ca or 1 800 567 1600