The Age (Australia) gives 3.5 stars to the Sydney production of
The Moors.
Time and place are absurd abstractions in Silverman's world, and logic an extraneous luxury. Yet, like looking at a trompe l'oeil surrealist painting, themes of love and loneliness take shape and dance before your eyes.
Emilie, the newly hired governess (Brielle Flynn), arrives at a house that is probably on the Yorkshire Moors (or might not be) with a reasonably firm grip on reality, only to find her fingers rapidly slipping. Nothing, you see, is quite as it seems. Agatha (Romy Bartz), the stern older sister of the diary-keeping Huldey (Enya Daly), has fraudulently hired Emilie by masquerading via letter as the sisters' brother, Branwell (the name of the Brontës' brother), who, is a bricked-in prisoner in the attic.
Kate Gaul's production and design (for Siren Theatre Co) astutely uses a slow-motion revolve to let us scrutinise moments of intra-scene stasis from different angles. In conjunction with Nate Edmondson's music she has maximised the inherent Gothic melodrama – in fact, perhaps too much too soon. The theatricality fizzes so vigorously in the text, itself, that the delivery could actually be underplayed. The key to non-naturalistic acting, after all, is not to add a side-order of ham to the theatrical feast, but to bare the truth that lies within this new reality.
Diana Popovska does this in portraying the maid (who, in a typically Silvermaniac flourish, is called Marjory in the parlour; Mallory in the scullery). As a direct result Popovska also maximises the humour of a play that is funnier than this production currently allows it to be. Bartz's Agatha is less austere than might have been expected, and therefore subsequent revelations come as less of a jolt. Nonetheless she, too, is expert at milking the zaniness, while maintaining a truthful core to her character.
The animals obviously occupy yet another parallel reality, and if one suspects still more could be made of the moorhen, Francis is charming in depicting the poor bird's dull-brained naivety. Campbell's philosophical mastiff may have benefited from a deeper-pitched voice as he pursues his improbable love affair and its dark, unfortunate consequences. Daly could earn more of Huldey's latent laughs by pulling back early on, but she comes into her own when spearing towards lunacy. Flynn has further to go to mine the truth of Emilie. She already has something of the requisite vivacity, and now faces the snag of how to play "normal" in a mad, mad world. If these performances settle during the season, audiences will relish Silverman's quixotic imagination – whether Brontë aficionado or not. (John Shand)
Williamsburg Yorktown Daily suggests places 'to spark first-date romance in Williamsburg'.
Nearby Mermaid Books also has first-date potential, with its quirky decor. There are comic strips taped to the walls and mermaid paintings on stools and above bookshelves. Plus, the scent of books — and being surrounded by literary romances from “Pride and Prejudice” to “Wuthering Heights” — could create an intimate mood. (Alexa Doiron)
AnneBrontë.org has a post on the background of Charlotte and Emily's journey to Brussels.
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