at Loft Ensemble.
I have to admit that I am still reeling a little from this play. In a good way. I grew up reading the Brontë sisters books, at school and at home. Of course, “Wuthering Heights” is a staple novel in England, as well as “Jane Eyre” and” Agnes Grey.” But, if I’m honest, I know very little about the Brontës themselves. Or their rather complicated relationship with each other and their beloved brother Branwell.
This play takes place over Branwell’s final few days. The sisters and Branwell had a now very well-known past time, creating intricate mythologies and worlds and then playing out storylines within them, like some kind of Regency period Dungeons and Dragons, with very strict parameters and ever expanding plots. It’s probably how they all developed so well as writers, and it is here that we find them all. Opening and closing the little books of rules they made, jumping from one world to another, from one myth to another frantically searching for some peace for their dying brother.
The sisters are so delightfully different from one another, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë and these fine actors play them as exactly that. Two other sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, are also included, although they died quite young of TB. And then, of course there is the adorable Branwell, who suffered from alcoholism and laudanum addiction, but was fiercely loved by his sisters. It feels as if throughout the play they are trying to hide him within their stories, to keep him away from the ghostly Maria and Elizabeth who have come to take him away. And so the play unfolds with the sisters becoming increasingly agitated and desperate to save a brother who was long past saving.
“Branwell (And The Other Brontes) : An Autobiography Edited by Charlotte Brontë” is both beautiful and painful to watch. All the performances are so individually exquisite that I felt I knew them all right away. The intense bond they had, a binding, which can be both good and bad. Yet, it was deep and unrelenting, even in death.
Charlotte seems the strongest, but strength isn’t always obvious. There is no attempt to modernise, thankfully, so the sisters are dressed exactly as they would have been, without pretense though, or primping. They are natural and exactly as they should be. Anne is earnest, Emily sweet, Charlotte tough and the ghost sisters are also very specific, dry and funny and bold.
Branwell tore my heart out though. With his soft bewilderment, which at first I didn’t understand, but then, as the ghosts pulled closer, I did. He is utterly captivating. And I admit I wept many many times, even before I knew what was bound for at the end.
What a gorgeous selection by Loft Ensemble. And how brilliant are all these actors. So perfect for their roles, so utterly believable as these gifted and sad sisters. It’s as if they always knew they didn’t have much time, and so where determined to fill every minute of their life with as much as they could. (Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros)
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