Stallybrass
Shines in Bronte Drama
The voice of the blind
Patrick Brontė is heard leading the family in prayer before the
curtain rises on “Glasstown”, Noel Robinson’s new play about the
tempestuous association of her three authoress sisters and their
brother.
Miss Robinson writes
with feminine insight into the gloomy foreboding atmosphere of
the parsonage, realised in a superb and multi-purpose set by Bob
Ringwood.
Glasstown is the dream
world of the Brontė children, peopled with imaginary characters
and invested with numerous facets of make believe. The sisters
break free of it. Branwell, besotted by gin and drugs, cannot.
In the end he loses his grip on reality.
Powerful
A year in the life of
the Brontės is here captured with a powerful and perceptive
pen. Charlotte emerges as the dominant character - Anne is
weak, Emily strangely silent and enigmatic at times.
As the sisters sit
round the table at their writing, Branwell goes out to The Bull
to return drunk. It is on occasions like this that Charlotte
assumes control in a magnificent performance by Anne Stallybrass.
It is tremendous in its passion, sad in its stillness.
She takes out some
faded letters, tied in red ribbon, and in so doing expresses a
lost world of what might have been. Robert Powell’s Branwell is
a figure of inescapable tragedy, given to sudden rages and
weeping fits in quick switches of mood.
It is in his stormy
confrontations with Charlotte that the play gains most strength
in Frith Banbury’s direction.
The other tragic figure
is John Robinson’s blind, lost father who never loses faith in
his weakling son.
No Joy
Emily (Angela Down) and
Anne (Vicky Ireland) are seen on the verge of a breakthrough to
literary fame. But there is no joy in the demeanours of Currer,
Ellis and Acton Bell. The Brontės were not a happy family,
though at times in his play Branwell’s laugh has a ring of truth
about it.
© Evening Post, Leeds
26 June 1973
Glasstown