The Brontë sisters will never go out of style and thank God for that

Let's begin our newsround with some local papers which mention recent Brontë-related events. Keighley News covers the recent performance of the puppetry theatre company Frolicked at the Brontë Parsonage Museum (in the picture, Frolicked puppeteer Beka Haigh at work in the Bronte Parsonage Museum with the 'ghost' of one of the literary family's servant, source)

Visitors to a Brontë shrine enjoyed a bonus — with no strings attached.
Outdoor puppet theatre company Frolicked presented a specially commissioned show, at the Parsonage Museum, in Haworth.
Informal interactive performances were given in the Parsonage and its grounds.
Huddersfield-based Frolicked specialises in creating puppets and performing at interesting and unusual locations.
Currently on show at the parsonage is “My Life Dreams” — an exhibition of digitally manipulated photographs based on the Brontës by Swiss artist Annelies Strba.
And visitors also have a rare opportunity to see the famous portrait — on loan from the National Portrait Gallery — of Emily Brontë, painted by her brother Branwell.

And the Hebden Bridge Times reports a recent talk by Ian M. Emberson (who will also appear in the upcoming Ilkley Literature Festival)

AT the latest Heptonstall Women's Institute meeting Ian Emberson spoke about the Brontes.

Some Brontëites now. From a member of the Creativesports's website staff:

I read Middlemarch when I was in graduate school and loved it, along with Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. But, then, the Victorian novel was my specialty genre, and I pretty much loved anything from that period, be it Coleridge or Dickens or the Brontë sisters or Thackery (sic) or whomever. (Lawr Michaels)

Locus Magazine (September 2008) recommends Galen Beckett's The Magicians and Mrs. Quent:

A first novel, and first in a series, mingling Jane Austen-style comedy of manners with the Victorian gothic of Charlotte Brontë — and just a hint of Lovecraftian cosmic menace. The daughter of a mentally ill magician tries to keep her family together and find love while dealing with the disapproval of polite society and her demanding mother.

And Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga and its Brontë references have arrived even in India:

But that reading may in fact be not all true. If anything, Meyer’s work is a romance. There are echoes from Austen and the Brontes (not just Charlotte, whom the author lists as a favourite, but Emily too).
The atmosphere is Wuthering Heights and if you didn’t get that, there are enough references to the classic to drive home the point. But more than that the Twilight Saga most definitely reminded me of Mills & Boon. (Anoothi Vishal in Business Standard)

The National Review manages to slip a Brontë mention in a review of The Lincolns. Portrait of a Marriage:

A man who thought himself damned by a “devilish passion” for a girl would not only have been morbidly sensitive, as Lincoln was always to be, to that which is hellish in life, he might also have adopted, as his own pet theory, the Romantic idea that the syphilitic sufferer, though foredoomed to madness, receives compensatory gifts of creative power and visionary insight. Byron’s Manfred, Poe’s Roderick Usher, and the heroes of Hugo, Balzac, and the Brontë sisters are variations on the 19th-century theme that genius is in many cases allied to diabolic depravity. (Michael Knox Beran)

A couple of Australian news sites review the ongoing performances of Polly Teale's Brontë in Brisbane. Let's begin with the positive one. Amy Hyslop on Australian Stage (picture source)

Just like being rich and thin it seems that the Brontë sisters will never go out of style and thank God for that. Presented by ThreeSisters Productions, a group aiming to “shine light on female voices and characters”, Brontë is the second play written by Brontë obsessive Polly Teale to be performed in Brisbane this year.
It examines the short lives of sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and the complex reasons behind the desire of three such naturally reclusive women to write works of passionate, uncompromising fiction. Removing the sisters from their mythology and placing them squarely in the domestic, Teale’s script brims with real human warmth, passion and humour without sacrificing any of the romanticism without which any play about the sisters would be incomplete.
Sue Rider’s direction is excellent and she has elicited wonderful performances from her young cast who all rise to the considerable challenges of Teale’s densely packed, demanding script. Rebecca Roberts is engaging as the unworldly Anne and Hannah Levien brings a stern, passionate pragmatism to ambitious Charlotte.
Ron Kelly delivers wonderfully nuanced performances in a number of different roles including Patrick Brontë and Mr Rochester (Jane Eyre) and Kerith Atkinson brings a disturbing undercurrent to Cathy (Wuthering Heights) and Bertha (Jane Eyre).
But the standout performances come from Kevin Spink and Kathryn Marquet as Branwell and Emily. In the difficult role of the lost brother who of all the siblings most desired celebrity but was least blessed with talent Spink is totally convincing, showing us not only Branwell’s rage but his vulnerability too. Kathryn Marquet, who I last saw as Bertha Mason in Harvest Rain’s recent production of Jane Eyre, really delivers as the complex Emily, the deeply reclusive sister with one foot in the grave and her head in the clouds.
Considering the challenges of size and location the Sue Benner theatre presents to any production, let alone one seeking to impart a gothic Victorian atmosphere, Brontë is remarkably atmospheric. The set design by Kitty Taube makes the most of the tiny stage cleverly placing the audience inside a recreation of a recreation of the Brontë household.
Stephen Brodie’s sound design is hauntingly beautiful and the costumes by Carolyn Taylor-Smith are a refreshing departure from the usual period fare being thoughtfully designed to harmonise with every element of the production without slavishly copying period style.
If I have one criticism it would be that no one managed a real Yorkshire brogue but it’s a small point in the scheme of things. Brontë is a wonderful production showcasing some of Brisbane’s most talented new performers and is a must for any Brontë fan.

And now the negative one by Sue Gough in The Courier Mail:

POLLY Teale is an English playwright and director who has a fascination for bringing the works of the revered Bronte sisters to the stage. (...)
In this more recent work, Bronte, she narrates the tragic history of the entire family.(...)
It is appropriate that the production is directed by Sue Rider because she has a long list of credits for writing, directing and acting in plays about women and women's issues.
Set designer Kitty Taube's backdrop is a blown-up page of handwritten manuscript that doubles as a clever screen behind a simple kitchen setting and Jason Glenwright's lighting creates the perfect mood.
The ambience is completed by composer Kylie Morris's hauntingly atmospheric soundscape.
Having set the scene so well, it's a pity the play can't live up to its introduction.
The trouble is that Bronte is first and foremost educational, sometimes tediously so, even though Teale, while remaining fairly faithful to the historical facts, attempts to spice things up by taking some liberties with both characterisation and motivation and also with suggestions of incest, smouldering sexual frustration and sibling envy.
This does not get around another fault: The play feels as if it was written 30 years ago.
The extended exposition - the repetition rather than reworking of feminist critique - and the endless philosophical rhetoric do nothing to explain the central mystery of how the Bronte sisters, who lived all their lives in extreme isolation on the Yorkshire Moors, conjured up such wild passion in their work.
Teale tries to show how domestic torments caused by their alcoholic brother Branwell (Kevin Spink) provided inspiration, but this is somewhat facile.
The least-famous of the sisters, Anne (Rebecca Roberts), is the quieter foil for the ambitious Charlotte (Hanna Levien) and the wildly melancholic Emily (Kathryn Marquet).
As their frustrations multiply, we see these projected into their written characters and Kerith Atkinson, doubling as Cathy from Wuthering Heights, and the lunatic Bertha from Jane Eyre, invades the action, one moment a frail creature in white, the next a writhing lost soul in scarlet rags.
While the London production opted, accurately, for Irish accents for the sisters - such was their isolation that they spoke like their father - Rider has settled for a Yorkshire burr and the actors handle this well.
Ron Kelly is outstanding in his multiple roles and Kathryn Marquet has the dramatic endurance to sustain a very believable Emily.
It may well be the fault of the playwright that the remaining actors seem trapped in a rather mediocre melodrama.

The National Post thinks that the fashion designers' autumn creations are somewhat gloomy:

When preparing for their autumn collections, fashion designers must have been boning up on Wuthering Heights and Edgar Allan Poe, because their collections plumb the inky depths of black on black on black. (Nathalie Atkinson)

And we have a Heathcliff sighting on an article in The Independent Love & Sex section:

As a child, I was always drawn to the tortured rogues like Heathcliff in literature, even though he was cruel to animals, beat his wife and wound up miserable and dead. Despite the fact that I was a confident, independent woman who has succeeded in many facets of life, in the past I have been emotionally immature when it comes to relationships. (Catherine Townsend)

On the blogosphere, Mademoiselle J briefly posts about Jane Eyre 2006 (in Swedish), nastia: pretty in pink posts about Charlotte Brontë and things mean a lot devotes a post to Jane Eyre.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Talks, Theatre, Wuthering Heights