Review by Sam Waite
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Beginning their literary careers under male pseudonyms, with the revelation are their true identities boosting both sales and scandal, the three Brontë sisters are widely read and remembered to this day. Well, some a touch more than others – Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s lone novel, Wuthering Heights, still make many readers’ lists of all time favourites, but while contemporary reanalysis is slowly increasing Anne’s position as a revolutionary author, her reputation as “the third sister” has yet to be erased from the trio’s collective history.
With Underdog: The Other Other Brontë, now playing at London’s National Theatre, playwright Sarah Gordon utilises the sisters’ history and career to explore the jealousy that stems from driven women being forced to compete for the single opening allowed to them. Where the title may suggest Anne as our protagonist, Underdog is firmly from the viewpoint of eldest sister Charlotte, who enters boisterously through the Dorfman stalls, questioning those in the aisle seats on their favourite Brontë novel – almost all, as expected, say Jane Eyre. Introducing that this isn’t a story about her… but that it kind of is, Charlotte then takes us through an abridged story of the Brontë sisters from aspiring writers to literary legends, with all the comedy and tragedy in between.
Curiously, with both featuring a famed poet by the name of Emily, the tonality of Underdog is best compared to Apple’s series Dickinson. Like that series, Underdog combines more conventional costume drama touches with broader comedy and touches of absurdism and experimentation. Blistering scenes of rivalry bubbling to the surface are raw and passionate in Gordon’s script, Charlotte’s self-justification of holding back Anne’s career entirely believable – not that she’s innocent, but that she’s convinced herself she is – while Anne and Emily increasingly fight back not only against their sister, but against their own portrayal in Underdog as a presentation of Charlotte’s version of events.
But for the most part, this is a comedy – a gag involving a slow-moving horse and coach begins the second act, the joke going on so long that it becomes funny all over again, so absurd is the horseless presentation and the sheer slowness of their journey. Grace Smart’s ever-moving set helps massively in selling the quick-moving comedy, with a two-part revolve allowing for extended walking scenes and the entry of props and ensemble members to be fluid and, often, hilarious. Smart’s field of wildflowers raises to become a leafy canopy during the play’s fourth-wall-abandoning opening, and beneath it everything is just that little bit cobbled together, giving the sense that Charlotte really has set out to tell this story with what furniture and old books she had available.
The gentle youngest sister, mild to a fault, Anne is portrayed with quiet, building strength by Rhiannon Clements. When an outburst that she wasn’t like this breaks the fourth wall once more, it’s easy to believe that this Anne would fight back even from beyond the grave, so deep has Clements allowed her passion to run and so richly and noticeably has her resentment built. Slightly underused but making fabulous use of her time on stage, Adele James plays Emily as the most outspoken of the sisters, but also as the least taken in by the allure of success and adoration. Between her siblings’ ongoing rivalry, James plays Emily’s frustration purely as a result of Charlotte’s abandonment of her sisterly duties – their father is unable to work, their brother a violent alcoholic, and it’s clear that Emily is at her wits end being the sole sibling to care about these issues.
With such difficult subjects mingling with occasionally bawdy comedy, Natalie Ibu has managed to balance the tones perfectly – neither overwhelms the others, and neither feels unwelcome when being reintroduced. With the help of intimacy (and fight) director Haruka Kuroda, Ibu finds a delicate intimacy between the sisters, their strained relationships clear as much from their changing body language as their cutting words. As mentioned, Ibu also makes wonderful use of the revolve, really helping to land visual gags and keep up the sometimes-manic pace the writing requires. The small male ensemble – Nick Blakely, Adam Donaldson, Kwaku Mills, Julian Moore-Cook and James Phoon – are put to work shifting between costumes, characters, genders, accents, and whatever else is required. The troupe are essential to the proceedings, but never overshadow the women at the story’s centre.
Of course, this being a story told by Charlotte Brontë, hers is the character who really needs to land. Gemma Whelan allows the character to be just a bit insufferable, a jealous and, as Anne puts it, “difficult to love” protagonist who never quite moves past her own insecurities. Despite these many and unignorable flaws, Whelan makes her sympathetic, more the victim of her own feelings and actions than anyone else, and increasingly willing to believe her own version of events. Heartbreaking as often as she is hilarious, Gemma Whelan is a genuine star, unafraid to dig into the uglier moments of her role.
Yes, it could be argued things are a tad reductive, boiling the struggles of women in a time when they were barely allowed to contribute beyond household servitude to petty sibling rivalries. However, we must remember that this is the story as remembered by the last surviving sister, and framed through the guilt she would feel over choices she was now unable to fully atone for. Intelligent and sharply written, Sarah Gordon’s Underdogis, like its take on Charlotte Brontë, imperfect, proud, and utterly captivating.
Underdog: The Other Other Brontë plays at the National Theatre, Dorfman Theatre until May 25th
For tickets and information visit https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/underdog-the-other-other-bronte/
Photos by Isha Shah