Remy Bumppo's Brontë reviewed

We have come across a couple of reviews of Remy Bumppo's Brontë. Before reading them, don't forget that you can see for yourself by clicking here and profiting from a 2x1 promotion.

Picture: Susan Shunk and Rachel Sondag. Source.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Here is the family profile: Three desperately unhappy and bookish sisters, one self-destructive brother and their rather distracted preacher father, all living far from the big city that might have given the women access to at least some possibility for success and happiness.
The plot of a Chekhov play? Could be, but as it happens, it is the story of those real-life Bronte girls -- Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre), Emily (author of Wuthering Heights) and Anne (poet and novelist) -- who lived their rather short but agonized lives in an isolated West Yorkshire parsonage, not far from the grim realities of a mill town. And all this is the stuff from which British playwright Polly Teale has crafted her play "Bronte," now receiving its U.S. premiere by the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. (Hedy Weiss)

Chekhov does have a play called Three Sisters, though it's totally unrelated to our three sisters. And what a weird parenthesis that is for Anne. Not only does it make her a vague kind of novelist but also the only poet in the family.

The thrust of Teale's literate, if at times sluggish play is just how the Bronte sisters (Victorian era spinsters, though Charlotte would marry in her late 30s and die soon after in childbirth) were warped by their society and how, for better and for worse, they funneled all their repressed passion, energy and dreams of immortality into their writing. (Hedy Weiss)

Charlotte died most probably in the early stages of pregnancy. I wonder, if you're going to see a play on the Brontë sisters, couldn't you at the very least read the Wikipedia articles on them?

The sisters' distinct personalities are clearly limned in director James Bohnen's well-cast production. Charlotte (Susan Shunk, prim yet commanding) is the oldest and mostly overtly ambitious. She enjoys considerable celebrity for Jane Eyre and in many ways dictates the legacies of her sisters. (Shunk also does a fine job with the show's funniest scene -- Charlotte's hilarious acceptance of a marriage proposal.)
Emily (played beautifully by Carrie A. Coon) is the genuine neurotic -- the one with the most keenly developed erotic imagination and a terror of the outside world. And Anne (the gentle Rachel Sondag) is the youngest and least formed. She dies early. (Hedy Weiss)

Well, she dies after Emily.

The sisters' spoiled, dissipated brother Branwell (Gregory Anderson is picture perfect) has all the advantages, plus the easy encouragement of his father (Patrick Clear, just right in this role and several others). But he lacks his sisters' talent and quickly sinks into alcoholism and debauchery.
Linda Gillum gives her all as the fictional characters (mad wives and spurned lovers) who animate the Brontes' best-known books, but this device verges perilously on parody. (Hedy Weiss)

And from the Chicago Tribune:

In the opening frame of Polly Teale's self-aware dramatic exploration of the sisters Bronte, the dramatist poses a compelling question: How did these three Yorkshire spinsters — women who apparently never had sex or even been passionately kissed — set the world ablaze with the likes of "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights"?
Genius in triplicate? Proto-feminist frustration? Something to do with their complex father or profligate brother? Or was it just the moody atmospherics of the isolated Yorkshire moors?
As anyone who has made the pilgrimage to the village of Haworth well knows, Charlotte, Emily and Anne are a fascinating collective enigma. And Teale's play, which debuted in England in 2005, is determined to avoid the cloying emotionalism of the Hollywood approach. Teale (also an acclaimed television dramatizer of Bronte works) wants us to ponder and contextualize the Brontes, not just be entranced by them.
Oy vey. I'd have settled for a show that actually created a credible milieu populated by women in whom I believe. Or a show that actually sheds light on its own questions. Yet thanks to the mixture of a troubled script and an unusually wobbly and inauthentic production from the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, "Bronte" feels like a long, ponderous plod.
Part of the problem is that the playwright wants it all ways — the actors know they're in a play, but broad swaths of the piece also proceed in realistic style. It's very hard to get your head around the narrative trajectory, especially because James Bohnen's production is a visual mess that falls into the perilous chasm between symbolism and specifics.
Teale forged the unfortunate device of having Bronte characters — Cathy from "Wuthering Heights," Bertha from "Jane Eyre" — show up in the parsonage, as writhing counterpoints to the sisters' more repressed personalities. Linda Gillum has the thankless job of playing these ghostly, sensual apparitions. Although it's not really the fault of the actress, those interludes are painful to watch.
Things do get a little better as they go — in particular Susan Shunk's Charlotte starts to flourish as a credible creation. And there are other sincere performances — including Carrie Coon's moody Emily and Rachel Sondag's nicely understated Anne. For Bronte fans and students, the piece will have some interest.
But the Yorkshire accents prove tough to master — it sounds at times as if these Brontes are from Eastern Europe. And this show mostly remains a blurred and uncertain swirl that feels weirdly unaware of the lonely, romantic moors just outside the Brontes' door. (Chris Jones)

Categories: Theatre