‘You truly are a glowworm among worms’

Limelight reviews Sydney Theatre Company's production of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall giving it 4 stars out of 5.

Brontë’s Wildfell Hall is a largely epistolary novel – written as a series of letters structured in three parts, with the middle section from Helen’s diaries during her years with her increasingly alcohol-sodden and volatile husband. Some stylistic continuity with Brontë’s novel is maintained by Gilbert’s off-and-on narrative commentary, which comes in fits and starts and is largely absent from the second half, only to be a little hammily recalled in the final line.

Aside from this peccadillo, Hoy’s reworked version for the stage is a seriously impressive feat, alternating briskly and elegantly between these two phases of Helen’s life to build tension, pathos and intrigue over the play’s almost three-hour running time (which truly flies by – I was frankly dreading the long sit). On a rotating level stage, we leap between past and future, with most of the large cast simultaneously leaping between roles. As the two separate worlds spin closer together, the playwright deftly drops in pieces to the larger puzzle of how the at first all-adoring ‘good wife’ Helen found the courage to leave.

Narkle is as fierce and lovely as a rose as our heroine, and convincingly displays the emotional turmoil of a woman trapped yet bitterly struggling against the gaslighting, victim blaming, misogyny and hyper-invigilated gender roles embedded in her society (including those imposed on her young son, played by Danielle Catanzariti). Arthur Huntingdon (whom critics have noted bears a striking resemblance to Brontë’s brother) is a chillingly calculating, intoxicated brute under Ben O’Toole – the shameless embodiment of poison-fuelled chauvinism that sees no reason and suffers no consequence to be less than the bully he is allowed to be. Like most abusers, he is simultaneously terrifying and pathetic. Hii’s Gilbert is also at first casually sexist, but not so far gone that his ideas on gender can’t be reorientated. Through his increasingly frequent dialogues with Helen, he learns that his assumptions of male superiority and functional marriages are narrow and cynical. In parochial England, it is his and other characters’ capacity to change – to see themselves and each other in a new light – which sets the play’s moral ideal. (For all its darkness, Wildfell Hall concludes as a romantic fantasy.)

The whole cast give sterling performances – from the always winsome Anthony Taufa (as recovering addict and mysterious landlord), to Nikita Waldron (who plays two similar wily women, capitalising on their sexuality to attain whatever little power they can), to Eliza Scott (whose two characters also reflect each other, both being good-hearted allies who have been tricked by the patriarchy into underestimating their worth).

Hoy’s script is laced with acerbically funny lines which travel centuries to mark with modern sensibilities, and there are dozens of little quirks of stage design and direction which make the audience burst appreciatively into laughter. For instance: Steve Rodgers as the reverend literally cracking open a raw egg on stage and sucking up its contents. Or a small little cross popping up out of a rotated chimney to suggest the building is now a church.

One of my favourite lines, spoken sarcastically by Helen after a particularly despicable scene of male entitlement, is: ‘You truly are a glowworm among worms’. (In her note on the text, Hoy writes she added “a dash of irreverence… I think [Brontë] was a bit of an irreverent writer herself – so hopefully she won’t mind.”) [...]

Written by Hoy in her late twenties – the same age as Brontë was – this production of Wildfell Hall is a bracing, sharp-witted and entertaining contemporary retelling of a provocative feminist classic. I was surprised and depressed at how relevant it felt. (Kate Prendergast)

And The Age finds the novel to be 'perfect for our times'.

In adulthood, when I finally picked up The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by the lesser-known Anne Brontë (the other Brontë), I did so with a mixture of resignation and spiritual smugness that is surely the reason anyone reads classics. This will be hard, I thought, but it will be good for me. How wrong I was! Anne’s novel is anything but a slog: it’s pacey, darkly funny, and almost unbelievably modern.

Playwright Emme Hoy, who is this year’s Patrick White Fellow and whose adaptation is being staged by the Sydney Theatre Company, describes a similar reading experience.

“I remember being viscerally shocked by the difference between Anne’s writing and Emily and Charlotte’s,” Hoy says.

The play’s director, Jessica Arthur, agrees. “There was so much that, when I read the play, I thought: Emme’s taken some liberties here, and then I read the book and I was like: oh, they literally had this conversation,” she says.

“It’s almost like the realistic sequel to Jane Eyre,” Hoy adds. “What happens if you actually marry Mr Rochester?”

Reader, let me tell you: what happens is grim. [...]

For these darker elements of her work, Brontë drew on her own life. Her Byronic elder brother, Branwell, a painter and poet, bore many similarities to Helen Graham’s husband, Lord Huntington. Both are charming and promiscuous (Branwell was once fired from a tutoring position in a reverend’s home because of a flirtation with his employer’s wife, 15 years his senior. Her name, hilariously, was Mrs Robinson). Branwell, like Huntington, also struggled with alcoholism, with Branwell losing his life to it at 31. [...]

However, Hoy was determined to balance social critique with hope. Hoy says that while Helen, unlike Jane Eyre, realises “the love of a good woman can’t fix a man”, the play “is actually also saying, you can change yourselves: you may be brought up in this structure but you can overcome it and recognise it”. This is achieved through the main character Gilbert who, through learning about Helen’s past, comes to recognise his own prejudices and abuses of power, or as Arthur puts it, “he starts to really understand himself in relation to other people”.

These strikingly contemporary themes of structural injustice and individual accountability might seem more at home in a think-piece than a period drama: the beloved, bonnet-y, bodice-y genre associated with frivolity and escapism. Indeed, the modern period drama is just what Anne Brontë might call “soft nonsense”. (Netflix’s Bridgerton, Arthur says, “has a lot to answer for”.) [...]

She has also been mindful of preserving Bronte’s dry wit. For a novel about abuse and alcoholism, it’s surprisingly funny. Hoy reminds me that perhaps the most devastating scene of domestic violence is contained in a chapter ironically titled “Social Virtues”. In the play, a direct address by Helen to the audience preserves this comedic tone. [...]

Before I leave, I ask Hoy and Arthur what they make of Charlotte’s suppression of her dead sister’s masterpiece. Did she feel betrayed, perhaps, by the way Anne appropriated their brother’s tragic life?

“I think it’s an act of love,” Arthur says. Hoy elaborates: “She really hated the novel because she thought it was because Anne was dwelling so much on the darkness and the bleakness of life that she died … I think she loved her and was trying to protect her, and had this fear that Anne saw too clearly.”

This answer, with all its intellect and compassion – its ability to stare tragedy in the face and still find hope – strikes me as very Anne Brontë. (Diana Reid)

We love to see The Tenant of Wildfell Hall talked about and vindicated but we would also like to see the Lord Huntington-was-based-on-Branwell mantra dropped because he was not. Lord Huntington is a compound of what Anne had witnessed during her years working as a governess for well-off families. 

AnneBrontë.org celebrated Branwell's birthday yesterday.