The Moors

The poster outside the Seymour Centre says I’m about to see ‘a hyper-theatrical and kinky homage to the Brontes’. Jen Silverman’s American take on such a strong part of the English literary cannon should be interesting. How, I wondered, would the Bronte sisters and their bleak, wind-swept moors emerge in this ‘hyper-theatrical’, ‘kinky’ version?

To the gloomy 19th-century parsonage inhabited by stern Agatha (forbiddingly played by Romy Bartz), her diary-obsessed younger sister Huldey (Enya Daly) and their distinctly batty scullery/parlour maid Marjory/Mallory (one-eyebrowed Diana Popovska), comes wide-eyed, red-haired Emilie (Brielle Flynn) to act as governess to... whom? There’s no child to be seen, and Master Branwell, the writer of the beautiful letter that has brought her to this strange place, is also absent.

There are two characters to be added to the cast and neither of them is human. One is a huge dog named Mastiff, treated by Agatha with utter contempt and played expertly with seething restraint by the only man in the cast, Thomas Campbell; the other is a Moor-Hen, wounded in the leg, forever on guard, touchingly played by Alex Francis. ‘I don’t want to be alone with my dark thoughts,’ says the dog. And who in this blizzardous place would disagree?

Before very long the action has speeded up, Agatha and Emilie are showing signs of togetherness and Huldey has sharpened her diary pencil and found a dirty great axe. What all this has to do with the ‘kinky’ Brontes or ‘hyper-theatrical’ life on the moors I’m not sure, but it’s all red meat to the Seymour crowd and they laugh and splutter throughout.

Kate Gaul, Director, has maintained a tight grip on proceedings, assisted by Kate Gaul, Set Designer, who sets the whole affair on a quiet revolve under a high chandelier, forcing us to accept, with nothing more than two chairs, the scene as Parlour, Second Sitting Room, Portrait Gallery, Great Hall, as well as the bleak, unsettling Moors. 

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Clare Hawley