Combining resources with Shared Experience is a sublime arrangement for the Watermill with this production of Bronte. The Watermill’s creative juices flow alongside and within the devised and experimental style of Shared Experience, producing a perfect contrast between simple reality and the heady fantasies of the Bronte sisters’ writings.
The most extraordinary fact that conveys itself to the audience is the stark contrast between the sisters’ secluded and uneventful lives and their passionate novels.
The author has written the play so that we are merely voyeurs glimpsing a past that is beyond our reach but affects the literature we read today.
As such the cast start in modern-day dress, becoming the Brontes by accessorising their costumes. The ghosts of their invented creations are conjured up by their imaginations in tandem with a nightmarish surrealism, both from the physicality of the performances and Tim Lutkin’s atmospheric lighting.
Kristin Atherton portrays Charlotte Bronte with a harsh frigidity that suits her inherited role as head of the siblings, whilst seeking the normality to lead a different life.
Elizabeth Crarer shows Emily as the most daredevil of the sisters with Flora Nicholson as excitable Anne and Mark Edel-Hunt relishing his role as Branwell - whose spoilt position as the only male sibling makes him a liability to both himself and the family.
David Fielder plays the father and other male roles and Frances McNamee doubles as the ethereal Cathy who is conjured up in Emily’s imagination as she writes Wuthering Heights and mad Mrs Rochester in whom Charlotte releases her innermost fears and frustrations. Nancy Meckler directs this superb production.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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