The perfect sister act

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner features the play We Are Three Sisters (don't forget about our special offer concerning the play script!).

For what Blake Morrison has done is shed light on the lives of the Brontë sisters through the text of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s play, Three Sisters.
It is not quite the left field idea it might at first seem. After all, Chekhov wrote about three sisters and their brother living in a remote part of Russia and the Brontës were three sisters and their brother who lived in a bleak, exposed part of Yorkshire.
One admittedly is fiction, the other the real lives of a group of women who have become iconic figures.
But the use of one story to shed light on the other has created a remarkable new theatre piece, one that arrives in Huddersfield next week.
“It’s taken me by surprise in terms of the absolute praise its had across the board,” said Barrie Rutter.
And he means from the outset when members of the Bronté Society sat in on the first read through of We Are Three Sisters, held in the parsonage in Haworth where the 19th Century novelists lived, to the play’s reception by both audiences and critics. [...]
“It’s been terrific so far,” said Barrie. “One review said this play had been waiting to be written for a long time.”
Barrie is an eloquent admirer of three women who despite the isolation of their surroundings led remarkable lives.
“They were superbly well educated by their father but they knew they had to work because the house belonged to the church.
“They were independent and the early suffragette was in them. My knowledge of them has been increased.
“It’s very funny this play as well. It has good ironic humour. I think people won’t expect that.
“Mrs Gaskell (an early biographer of Charlotte Brontë) did a dis-service to them. Her biography is all doom and gloom. It’s to that we owe a lot of the misconceptions about the girls and the times in which they lived,” said Barrie.
In this new Broadsides’ production, the sisters are played by actresses Catherine Kinsella, Sophia di Martino and Rebecca Hutchinson.
And according to Barrie, all three are beautifully cast.
The are, perhaps, the perfect sister act indeed.

The Yorkshire Evening Post takes a look at Leeds International Film Festival wchih opens next November 3rd with Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights.

More Brontë-related things to do, also on the other side of the pond, as The Spokesman-Review suggests Jane Eyre in Concert in Spokane, WA.

Paul Gordon’s 2000 Broadway musical version of Charlotte Brontë’s gothic romance is this year’s annual in-concert fundraiser for the Civic.
“In-concert” means that it is not fully staged. But don’t let that fool you. “Jane Eyre” will be even more elaborate, musically, than most of the Civic’s offerings, according to director Yvonne A.K. Johnson.
Between the singers and the musicians, there will be 60 people on stage. The orchestra, under the direction of Michael Saccomanno, will be 14 strong, more than twice the size of a usual pit orchestra.
The vocalists will include 10 members of the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus, singing the parts of the schoolgirls.
And because this is an in-concert show that doesn’t require busy singers to commit to months of rehearsals, the Civic is able to attract even more impressive vocal talent than usual.
Steven Mortier, one of the area’s most in-demand operatic baritones, sings the role of Rochester. Mortier has been in many opera productions over the years, and has also performed with the Spokane Symphony and other classical institutions. Yet he has rarely, if ever, performed in regional musical theater.
The role of Jane Eyre will be covered by Andrea Dawson, who has proven to be one of the area’s finest vocalists in many settings – musical theater (“White Christmas”), classical music (Windsong) and light opera (“The Pirates of Penzance”).
Sophia Caruso, who was a sensation as Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker” at Interplayers last spring, will be Young Jane.
Other notable voices: Darnelle Preston as Mrs. Fairfax and Tamara Schupman as Blanche Ingram.
This fundraiser will also support a good musical cause: “the continued professional excellence of our Civic orchestras,” according to the theater.
And the show itself? Variety said it has an “intelligent sung-through score” which tells the “complex story with twists and turns intact.”
The $30 ticket includes a post-show reception catered by Europa and Clinkerdagger. (Jim Kershner)

Rick Schwartz wonders in The Huffington Post 'Why do movies suck?' and states,

And don't even think of blaming the big bad studios. Yes, they spent an obscene amount of money on Green Lantern and Green Hornet, but they also gave us Bridesmaids, Jane Eyre, and the last Harry Potter. Bad movies are not the sole domain of the studios -- I invite any of you to go to your local film festival and sit through truly independent films made for microbudgets.

The Sentinel (Staffordshire) reviews the restaurant Miller & Carter at Harecastle Farm:

Prices here have reached the wuthering heights of £20-plus for a T-bone or fillet steak, while a Chateaubriand for two is £40.95.
The reference above to Wuthering Heights was deliberate, by the way, because the listed Jacobean farmhouse at Talke always reminds me of Heathcliff's gaff in the Brontë novel. [...]
e ate, by the way, in one of the original rooms, with thick stone walls and a massive period fireplace.
Others seemed to prefer to sit in banquettes in the modern extension to the original building, which are hardly ever frequented by the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy. (Alan Cookman)

The Sacramento Bee suggests a couple of Brontë texts for wedding ceremonies. Are we alone thinking that maybe - just maybe - a text from Jane Eyre isn't quite right for a wedding?

4. Literature: From "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Brontë
"I have for the first time found what I can truly love - I have found you. You are my sympathy - my better self - my good angel - I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you - and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one." [...]
9. Literature: From "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Brontë
...he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.... If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a might stranger.... He's always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. (Merrie Leininger)

The Huffington Post reports that Lady Bunny has sung Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights and interviews her:

And this month, New Yorkers are celebrating as Bunny makes her first local cabaret appearance in more than a decade, presenting "That Ain't No Lady" every Tuesday through November at Escuelita. The outrageous evening is beyond vulgar, in Bunny's time-honored way, and pits a new Peggy Lee cover and a devastating "tribute" to Amy Winehouse against classic Bunny numbers such as her extraordinary rendition of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights". . . [...]
JS: How did "Wuthering Heights" become a staple of your act? It's so left-field.
LB: I took my A-levels in England at a Quaker boarding school, believe it or not, and that's how I heard that song. It goes over a storm in the U.K., but you need to be a little alternative to know it here. It's a beautiful song, but of course my shrieking gives it a new tone. (John Sanchez)

Wuthering Heights 2011 is reviewed in Spanish by Pucela Project and Jane Eyre 2011 is also reviewed in Spanish by Oráculo. Bokmalande posts in Swedish about Classical Comics Jane Eyre.