Brooding Brontes
Cast Their Spell
The haunting
claustrophobic atmosphere of the Haworth Parsonage on the
Yorkshire moors will be permeating Cardiff’s New Theatre all
this week.
For a year from the
life of that incredible family, the Brontes, is fascinatingly
depicted in a new play by Noel Robinson, Glasstown, now in the
final week of its pre-West End tour.
The drama, remarkably
gloom-free compared with the popular image of the brooding Brontes, concentrates on the twelve months from June 1845.
Charlotte, the most
prolific of the novelist sisters, gradually asserts her control
over the family - a prop to her virtually-blind father, a
sympathiser with the sensitive Anne, spurring the self-contained
Emily to the publication that led to world-wide fame.
But the main
confrontation is between herself and the wayward Branwell as he
slides further and further into the world of artistic impotence
and illusion, a comforting fantasy world not unlike Glasstown,
which the Brontes invented during their childhood.
This production by
Frith Banbury is compelling - despite the rather awkward and
inadequate split set - with a light touch that prevents the
remorselessness of the tragedies developing into a mere
succession of depressions.
The acting of the cast,
all well known on television, is of a high standard, too - Anne
Stallybrass, powerful, almost steely, as Charlotte, the manager;
Robert Powell as the flamboyant, doomed Branwell, immensely
gifted but short on application; Angela Down as the
self-sufficient Emily with her unlikely streak of genius; Vicky
Ireland as the gentle, self-effacing Anne; and John Robinson as
the tortured Rev. Patrick Bronte, who outlived all six of his
children.
For all interested in
the Brontes and their works the play is constantly interesting
and should provoke plenty of discussion on the characterisations
and motives of this quite remarkable family.
©
South Wales Echo
22 May 1973
Glasstown