Breathing fresh life into the enduring Brontë family saga

Illustrated Theatre is to be commended for the ambition of its production, but the execution has yet to reach its full potential

From left: Desmond Eastwood, Ruairi Lenaghan, Katie McCann, Ashleigh Dorell and Louise O’Meara in Brontë Pic: Ste Murray

Brontë

By Polly Teale

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin

Rating:***

Polly Teale’s bio-drama brings life to three of literature’s greatest heroines, the Brontë sisters, who overcame the patriarchal prejudice of Victorian society that confined women to domestic life. What, the women ask in the play’s expository preface, “if we were married, or died in childbirth?” The answer is clear before they even tell their story: we never would have heard of them at all.