So back to what is available today, Underdog: The Other Other Brontë by Sarah Gordon.  The truth behind the assumed rivalry of the three Howarth Parsonage, Yorkshire sisters, Charlotte (Gemma Whelan), Emily (Adele James) and Anne (Rhiannon Clements) Brontë is that Anne died first of consumption, and Charlotte forbade the republishing of Anne’s novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Charlotte also rewrote Anne’s other novel Agnes Grey, which along with Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was a story of a governess.  Emily, in my opinion, author of the most wildly romantic Brontë novel Wuthering Heights with its flawed hero, Heathcliff, gets very little to do in Underdog.  Bramwell (James Phoon) is a drain on the Brontë family resources with his aspiration to be an artist and his philandering and addictions to alcohol and opium.

The play opens with Grace Smart’s beautiful, overgrown heathland set, wild grasses and wild flowers but all that is lifted so we now see the roots and earth below overhanging the revolving Dorfman stage.  We hear that Anne has applied to be a governess and has been accepted. 

This is an opportunity for ensemble actor Nick Blakely as Mrs Ingham to wear an outrageously ornate orange frock with bustle over his trousers topped with a confection of ribbons with orange feathers and tell Anne that she and Mr Ingham are very happily married.