Ruth Leon recommends… Underdog: The Other Other Brontë – National Theatre

Ruth Leon recommends… Underdog: The Other Other Brontë – National Theatre

Ruth Leon recommends

norman lebrecht

August 31, 2024

Underdog: The Other Other Brontë – National Theatre

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We think we know who the Brontes were, right? Three sad spinsters with a martinet father and an alcoholic brother, marooned in a miserable manse in Yorkshire with only their writing to sustain them. Well, not so fast.
 

Sarah Gordon’s new play at the National Theatre is an irreverent retelling of the life and legend of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and the story of the sibling power dynamics that shaped their uneven rise to fame.

The central character here is the ambitious Charlotte, and the play purports to show how one sister became an idol, another became a legend, and the other became known as the third sister. You know the one. No, not that one. The other, other one… Anne.

This is not a story about well-behaved women. This is a story about the power of words. It’s about sisters and sisterhood, love and jealousy, support and competition, directed by Northern Stage Artistic Director Natalie Ibu.

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Comments

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  • Mock Mahler says:

    I have to laugh remembering the British critic F. R. Levis, who in ‘The Great Tradition’ sniffed that there was really only one Bronte. (He meant Emily, but still didn’t put her in the Great Tradition.)

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