Kwaku Mills (Ensemble), Rhiannon Clements (Anne Brontë), Gemma Whelan (Charlotte Brontë) and Nick Blakeley (Ensemble) in Underdog: The Other Other Brontë at the National Theatre (c) Isha ShahSarah Gordon’s sometimes brash and roguishly modernist take on Yorkshire’s famous literary sisters UNDERDOG: THE OTHER OTHER BRONTË (which must surely deserve this year’s award for the ugliest and most cumbersome play title) not only attempts to convey the women’s efforts to challenge the established patriarchy, but also offers alternative viewpoints on history’s understanding of eldest sister Charlotte’s domineering, envious and selfishly competing behaviour towards her youngest sister Anne.
Under Natalie Ibu’s direction, Gemma Whelan (Charlotte), Rhiannon Clements (Anne) and Adele James (Emily) strive to be both the most and the least controlling, supportive, encouraging and undermining, as by turns they declare the brilliance of their literary creations, or timidly request sisterly evaluation of their possible merits. Charlotte is blunt, impatient, assertive and determined, whilst Emily is possessed of searing clarity, refuses to be bullied and seems to want everyone to just get along. Anne (and to some degree her brother Branwell) are the hopeless pacifiers, never sufficiently assertive to be fully considered, and cruelly used or dismissed as a consequence.
The competing personalities create natural opportunities for familial levity and there are many comedy moments during the first half, but ultimately it is the tragic early deaths of family members (largely from tuberculosis), and the questionable decision-making of the remaining sibling, which informs the tenor of the play and leaves the audience wondering what might have been if only Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had been followed by a huge canon of equally impressive works. Sadly, we can only ponder.
For the purposes of the play the author deploys a small tranche of male supporting actors who foppishly deliver a charming array of OTT characters, ranging from clip-clopping coach drivers to the sort of smug gentlemen’s club idiots which have proved the mainstay of period television dramas for more than half a century. With their help (and in spite of a few patchy moments), the play as a whole is a thoroughly entertaining and thought provoking revisionist exploration.
