Scribblemania

The annual poetry competition for children sixteen years and under is now underway. The closing date for entries is 31 July. Entry is free.

Forms are available from the Education Officer - susan.newby@bronte.org.uk

Mythic Power

Shared Experience's play Brontë has received much attention and many positive reviews in the last few months. This one appears in the most recent Brontë Society Gazette, which is distributed to members:





Shared Experience’s Brontë goes beyond the surface of everyday life and makes visible what is hidden: this play successfully does just what director Polly Teale intends.

Ten years ago, with Nancy Meckler, she performed the same service with her Jane Eyre. At the West Yorkshire Playhouse one evening in September I was impressed to such an extent that I felt inadequate chatting about it on Radio Leeds the following day in a four minute slot between the music requests: I was just pulling out random raisins from a very rich cake. Brontë is significantly nutritious.

Along with Paula Rego, whose images appear on the set - the facade of a burned house - Polly Teale is intrigued “by the mythic power of the mad woman, by Charlotte Brontë’s repulsion and attraction to her creation, by the mad woman’s danger and eroticism.� A central character returning, she writhes into the action from the shadows whenever approriate, grovelling, growling, slithering and crouching on the floor. A Christian whore in the tradition of Mary Magdalene perhaps, her clothing is in shades of red, just as it was in Jane Eyre.

Her accent, when she manages to gasp out a few distinguishable words, has a strong Jamaican flavour. She is the Bertha in Wild Sargasso Sea, the creole removed from respectability, the poor ghost whose life was written for her by Jean Rhys.

From the start, it is made clear that we are watching make-believe. Diane Beck (Emily), Catherine Cusack (Anne) and Fenella Woolgar (Charlotte) come on to speak to us as themselves, becoming their characters only after they have put on their corsets and dresses. In the spirit of Brecht, Shared Experience believes that the audience will become a mass of mindlessness if there is too much immersion. We must remain sharp.

Yet there is still much of the supernatural about the production, as there must be. Cathy drifting on the moor is ectoplasmically white, scattering feathers; a young Jane sees herself as a spirit in the mirror of the Red Room at Gateshead Hall; the female beast is a recurrent nightmare; the denizens of the Parsonage are constantly haunted by their creations, the mysterious threatening the rational.

Charlotte definitely burns Emily’s unfinished and unknown novel, holding the pages over a bucket. There is a hasty mention of the fact that this remains unproven. Fenella Woolgar brings out Charlotte’s practical, organisational side brilliantly, her front against what is submerged.

If forced to prise an individual from such a powerful ensemble, I would choose Diane Beck as Emily. She reinforces the established view of Emily with her need to be alone and her contempt for convention, and adds much more. I was particularly interested in her relationship with Branwell, the bringer of knowledge, carnal and otherwise. The insight was in the empathy, the lack of recoil.

Matthew Thomas’s Branwell is a slightly lovable binge drinker, forgivable in spite of his abuse of Charlotte and his describing her as a weasel. When he stands on the table wearing a green sash and shouting “Land ahoy!� we immediately recognise his early inspirational qualities.

David Fielder is very professionally versatile as Patrick Brontë, Arthur Bell Nicholls, Rochester and Charlotte’s tutor. Nicholls comes across as creepy and clumsy, a pathetic extra on the turbulent scene, almost funny.

Brontë has been cut back to the essentials: the second part is a miracle of pruning and of timing, and the result is a triumph. The production’s first tour started at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford in September and ended at the Lowry, Salford in December, but we can be sure that it will run and run.

Richard Wilcocks

(Photo of Charlotte burning Emily’s novel by Mark Pennington)

Passages

Dappled dusty rays dance
On well-worn smoke-laden upholstery.
I lean back in the unforgiving oak chair,
a battered copy of Jane Eyre in hand,
overwhelmed by the passionate, witty exchanges
between her and the treacherous Rochester.
Flipping pages, madly scribbling notes,
I begin, in my warm solitude,
to hear the laughter of patrons,
their loud voices competing for the floor,
the publican drawing rounds
of foam-headed dark ale.
Branwell,
here at the Black Bull,
his own father’s church
looming powerfully beside,
watchful, judging.
And Branwell?
Did he feel it?
No, he felt only the drink,
I think to myself,
as I watch the steam from my cup
of richly-brewed coffee, two parts milk,
coil into the hazy view,
today and yesterday
melting into that brief moment
of sun on tired chintz-covered benches.

I walk decidedly
on the cobblestone path,
my bag slung loosely over my shoulder.
I hear a distant echo,
horses’ shod hooves
clattering unevenly.
The fog is held captive, a heavy
damp shroud possessed by the moors.
I perceive in the wandering light
a mossy gravestone, fungus-inhabited letters—
H E A T H C L I F F, it says,
and for a suspended interval,
it is wholly believable
that he should
occupy this ground.
I am stone still,
caught between the pages,
party to his desperate clawing at
Catherine’s coffin;
his meeting death without resignation,
joining her at last.

The loud voices at the Black Bull
fill my head;
Branwell returns to the frame.
The weak soul
of one
bound to the
savage cruelty
of the other—
and I mourn
their passing,
each one.


Carolyne Van Der Meer

(Pictured above in Haworth at the Brontë Society Education Conference in September 2004)

Brontës in Bath

If you live within reach, you should note these dates!

BATH LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2006

Thursday 9 March 7.30-8.30pm

Exploring the Brontës : Polly Teale in conversation with Caroline Maynard
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
Tickets £7 (£5 concessions)
Shared Experience theatre director Polly Teale discusses her new play Brontë and its use of Paula Rego's Brontë prints with director Caroline Maynard. An unmissable chance to view the prints and get a glimpse into a working relationship between artist, theatre director and the inspiration to both: the Brontës themselves.

Sunday 12 March 1-2pm

Michele Roberts and Patricia Duncker - Exploring the Brontës
The Guildhall, Bath
Tickets £6 - £4 concessions
Michele Roberts and Patricia Duncker both acknowledge the powerful influence of the Brontës on their own novels (Charlotte Brontë is a central character in Michèle Roberts's The Mistressclass) and bring their skills as leading literary critics to bear on the passionate world of the Brontë sisters, exploring in particular the significance of their portrayal of domestic violence and cruelty.

The brochure for the 2006 Bath Literature Festival is published this month with the website at www.bathlitfest.org.uk. Bath Festivals Box Office on 01225 463362 or boxoffice@bathfestivals.org.uk

The Parsonage in winter

The Parsonage is currently closed to the public. This is so that staff can clean up exhibits, change displays and examine precious artefacts before re-opening on February 1st 2006.

Curator Polly Salter, who is in charge of the operation, is anticipating welcoming the seven millionth visitor this summer.

The museum opened in 1928. Roughly calculated, one million visitors have walked through the front door each decade.

Every exhibit must be carefully scrutinised, displays must be updated and essential maintenance must take place. A new exhibition called Face to Face with Charlotte is being set up - in her bedroom, where she died in 1855.

Staff can still be contacted, and would love to hear from you. For details of events, email andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk

To join the Brontë Society email hedley.hickling@bronte.org.uk

When will Heath play Heathcliff?

Heath Ledger

The 26-year-old Heath Ledger is "straight and guyish" according to Howard Feinstein in his piece in the Guardian on Friday January 6, but he has not balked at playing the part of gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee's exquisite, Wyoming-set Brokeback Mountain, an adaptation of Annie Proulx's 1997 short story.

His mining engineer father and French teacher mother named him after Emily Brontë's Heathcliff, who might also be described as straight and guyish.

"...there is something seductive about him," says Feinstein, who goes on to quote Lena Headey, who co-starrred with him in Terry Gilliam's Brothers Grim: "I can't imagine anyone anywhere being able to say no to him. His energy is infectious."

Milton Rosmer as Heathcliff

Remember Milton Rosmer?

The search is on for what might be the first ever film version of Wuthering Heights, one of the few adaptations to have stuck closely to what Emily Brontë actually wrote.

Only a few stills and photographs taken in and around Haworth during the filming remain as clues to its whereabouts. The search was launched after the Parsonage was given an album of these which were presented originally by the film's producer, A V Bramble, to Jonas Bradley, a very active Brontë Society founder-member and a teacher at the school in Stanbury, who had helped find appropriate locations for the crew.

The film, shot in 1920, was a six-reeler which lasted for about an hour and a half. It was made by the long-gone Ideal Film Company, based in London's Soho .

Milton Rosmer starred as the adult Heathcliff, with three other actors playing the character in his youth. Rosmer was considered by some to have been one of England's answers to Rudolph Valentino, and would have boosted box office takings.

Cathy was played by three actresses including Anne Trevor and child star Twinkles Hunter.

"No-one seems to have a copy," Parsonage Librarian Ann Dinsdale told this blog. "We have contacted an impressive number of people and organisations, from the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles and the Library of Congress, to Kevin Brownlow, an acknowledged expert on silent films.

We believe it may be in private hands.

It would be wonderful to have in our collection. We have a huge number of programmes and stills of all the many adaptations and in recent years there has been a huge interest in the films.

The film's makers went to a lot of trouble to ensure the accuracy, shooting it on location. It covers the entire novel while most modern adaptations end half-way through."

More than eighty years ago, canisters of the film, billed at the time as 'Emily Brontë's tremendous story of hate' might have remained in Yorkshire after the showings, but are more likely to have been taken to some central distribution point, probably London.

Although some early films have survived fairly well, many forgotten classics have decayed beyond the point where they can be restored. Thinking optimistically, it is possible that Wuthering Heights on its cellulose nitrate base was once copied on to modern safety film.

Ann Dinsdale is optimistic: "Previous curators have tried to find it, but did not get far. We decided that the time has come to make a concerted effort.

We want to hear from anyone who might have any information at all about the film. Perhaps your grandparents talked about the fascinating events in the village, which must have caused a stir.

And ultimately, has anyone got a copy?"

*Email this blog if you have details! heveliusx1@yahoo.co.uk

Milton Rosmer (pictured above, but not as Heathcliff)had a lengthy and successful career as an actor, director and writer. He appeared as Mr Bennett in a 1952 television version of Pride and Prejudice and in many popular films in the preceding decades, for example Goodbye Mr Chips, made in 1939.

His direction of Dreyfus in 1931 was much praised.

In 1920 cinema audiences would probably have known him for his roles such as Theodore Lawrence in Little Women (1917) or Sir Roger de la Haye in The Chinese Puzzle (1919).

As a stage actor, he was much admired, and was briefly (in 1943) Director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford.