Rhiannon Clements (Anne Brontë), Gemma Whelan (Charlotte Brontë), and Adele James (Emily Brontë) in Underdog: The other other Brontë at the National Theatre. Credit Isha Shah
Simon Jenner April 4th 2024
“This… is not about me” Charlotte Brontë keeps asserting, after asking the audience what their favourite Brontë novel is: then often qualifies it. “But Reader… I think you know who’s most quotable.” Sibling rivalry and support powers Sarah Gordon’s Underdog:The Other Other Bronte which premieres at the National Theatre’s Dorfman directed by Natalie Ibu till May 25th when it proceeds to Northern Stage.
There were originally six siblings. It’s tempting to think Six became Three, with an occasional rave (at publisher George Smith’s lionising party for Charlotte). Certainly there’s an almost music-theatre feel infusing the comedic characters; a northern club vibe. It certainly earns laughter.
There’s even a women’s toilet club scene, where Charlotte goes to hoik out a cowering Anne back into the Smith party. They have plumbing here, the pair reflect. And large hoses, which at one point appear to blast the pair with wind and petals, in a Brechtian riff.
Rhiannon Clements (Anne Brontë), Gemma Whelan (Charlotte Brontë), and Adele James (Emily Brontë) in Underdog: The other other Brontë at the National Theatre. Credit Isha Shah
That vaudeville moment is typical of the sheer exuberance of Grace Smart’s revolve stage. A thicket of northern gorse rockets upwards like a spaceship after the first scene, never to reappear. There’s two cavernous doorways like entrances to train tunnels. Everything from writing-desks to unfeasibly-wheeled carriages to an illuminated glass box for Charlotte-the-icon sweep on and off, against gorgeous period punk-inflected costumes.
Zoe Spurr’s lighting flicks from candlelit parsonage to garish disco too; and Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s sound design is anything but classical. Ingrid Mackinnin’s movement direction spins a carousel of storytelling on the revolve.
Two siblings try modifying, nudging, challenging the survivor’s narrative and turn competing storytellers as genteel Victorian dress-rustling turns hustling. A fourth, Branwell, just droops with themes and plot-points for his sisters.
It’s clear too this isn’t about three but two siblings, as the underdog of the title, Anne Brontë (Rhiannon Clements) gets credited with all the ideas, from writing novels to using pseudonyms, to gritty social realism. In Gordon’s hands Anne emerges as the most modern, even post-modern sister.
Deeply-informed as she is, Gordon is above all going to wreak havoc with Brontë-worship, particularly with Charlotte. Clements moves seamlessly from the peacemaker she’s portrayed as, to critical mother. Charlotte’s not impossible to love, Anne counters her elder’s self-pity. Just very difficult. Clements’ Anne above all brings the nearest we get to critical engagement with myth, warmly delivered like the family’s most sympathetic therapist.
Rhiannon Clements (Anne Brontë), Gemma Whelan (Charlotte Brontë), and Adele James (Emily Brontë) in Underdog: The other other Brontë at the National Theatre. Credit Isha Shah
Certainly Agnes Grey (prototype, Anne and Emily assert, of Jane Eyre) and the radical The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are pioneering. And Charlotte’s novel emerged after her siblings’ first were accepted and her The Professor rejected. Watch the teeth-grinding. Despite this, Anne’s placatory nature ensures she’s almost written out of the serious writing contest. Charlotte indeed supressed bestseller The Tenant of Wildfell Hall after Anne’s death.
Charlotte Brontë (Gemma Whelan) leads the storytelling in her blazing red dress (the ensemble’s initially kitted out in red shirts too, like a Charlotte chorus). Anne’s in heather, and Emily Brontë (Adele James) in an electric royal-blue. It’s a button-holing swagger, life-affirming, yet Charlotte immediately takes credit for every idea Anne has. With an insatiable lust for fame.
Whelan also revels in the broadest accent, and Clements – Anne stigmatised as a mouse – the least. With Charmian Hoare’s dialect coaching, this seems a conscious choice, underscoring the perils of gentility.
Emily’s uncharacteristically sidelined in this work. She summarises though the case against Charlotte: “You know you’ve never dared compete with me like you have her. Because you needed someone lower, someone you found less threatening… And she has been stupid and kind enough to let you. And I will never, never forgive you for it.” Gordon catches Emily Brontë’s fiction-writing vehemence, the closest we have to Emily’s own. James makes much of the relatively few but trenchant speeches she gets. Gordon’s Emily fights for privacy, autonomy; and unleashes fury at being posthumously edited.
James Phoon as Branwell, Gemma Whelan (Charlotte Brontë) and Rhiannon Clements (Anne Brontë)Credit Isha Shah
The most theatrical moment comes when Emily and Anne act out a death-scene in Charlotte’s next novel Shirley modelled on Emily – and at one point Anne’s final illness. They literally corpse it, helpless with silent laughter.
Branwell Brontë (James Phoon) enjoys a few early romps as a drunk and there’s a powerful scene as he and James fight upstage (in Haruka Kuroda’s fight and intimacy direction) as Clements’ Anne sprawls downstage transmuting it into fictional gold.
Kwaku Mills provides a vivid cameo as servant Tabby and brattish Cunliffe, a bird-torturing boy in Anne’s charge. Julian Moore-Cook’s almost Rochesterian publisher George Smith bestrides Charlotte’s fantasy, and it’s no accident he’s her earlier crush Mr Heger. Both dismiss her as a woman, especially when the ensemble arrives, tattling in blue-striped top-hats like a travelling circus of critics.
Adam Donaldson’s sneering rackety publisher Thomas Newby is the apotheosis of his other main role as head-teacher Mr Brocklehurst, himself one parsonic sneer. Nick Blakeley’s uproarious as snobby Mrs Ingham treating Anne as a sub-species; and novelist-cum-PR-machine Elizabeth Gaskell, determined to sanitise Charlotte, just as Charlotte had her sisters: she even places her in an illuminated glass cube.
Nick Bakeley and Rhiannon Clements (Anne Brontë) Credit Isha Shah
Gordon chooses to leave some vexed questions she might have capitalised on: whether Charlotte or Emily herself destroyed Emily’s second novel (possibly the largest single loss to 19th century literature). And Phoon’s Branwell isn’t the writer who rendered the finest 19th century English translations of Horace. This is a competition.
It’s also the most riotous retelling of literary myth, punching so fast it shortens its estimated two hours 15 by about eight minutes. It’s exhilarating, hilarious, and skewers a few truisms with all-too-plausible truths. Catch it before it flies as far north as that screen of gorse.
Underdog: The Other Other Bronte
National Theatre, a co-production with Northern Stage
National Theatre, Dorfman
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Director Natalie Ibu, Set & Costume Designer Grace Smart, Lighting Designer Zoe Spurr, Sound Designer Alexandra Faye Braithwaite, Movement Director Ingrid Mackinnin, Fight and Intimacy Director Haruka Kuroda
Casting Director Naomi Downham, Dialect Coach Charmian Hoare, Company Voice Work Shereen Ibrahim, Associate Lighting Designer Charlotte Burton, Associate Movement Director Ana Beatriz Meireles, Staff Director Natasha Hawes
Till May 25th
Adele James (Emily Brontë) Credit Isha Shah