It honours playwright Jordi Mand’s text while finding its own quiet force on Scarborough’s Greek amphitheatre stage.
In Bronte: The World Without, Mand imagines Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë as young women pressing against the bonds of family obligation, financial anxiety and the shadowed presence of the men upstairs: their ailing father, Patrick, and their troubled brother, Branwell. The mother is long gone. What remains is a household of talent, worry and fierce private longing.
The story takes place over five days in the span of three years.
Mand’s play is at its strongest when it treats authorship as both escape and burden. Charlotte has written Jane Eyre, Emily Wuthering Heights, and Anne Agnes Grey; yet their ambitions must pass under the guise of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the male pseudonyms necessary for women seeking publication in a world determined to underestimate them. The title’s “world without” becomes more than a phrase. It is the life beyond the walls of their home and the freedom the sisters can imagine before they can possess it.
Director Helen Juvonen approaches the material with evident care, allowing the text’s themes of perseverance, artistic hunger and sisterly loyalty to settle without overstatement.
This was a final dress/opening-night performance that already had firm shape and promise but was hindered by this past week’s volatile weather. I’m going to cut some slack for this particular performance only. Now that the show is up and running, I have every confidence it will deepen further in front of an audience.
The production’s outdoor setting at Guild Festival Theatre’s Greek amphitheatre proves a natural ally. Its historic-looking architecture helps summon the past, while the week’s difficult weather—flooding followed by smoke from Northern Ontario forest fires—adds context to the company’s achievement in getting the show on its feet. Honey Hoseiny’s lighting design makes persuasive use of the setting sun and oncoming evening, gently sharpening the play’s tension. Alex Amini’s costumes evoke the period with care, down to the nightcaps the sisters would have worn to bed.
Maddie Bautista’s sound design serves the spoken exchanges well and helps establish the unseen figures elsewhere in the house, though the sung lyrics would benefit from greater clarity as the run progresses. Leah Wilton’s choreography, meanwhile, finds a disarming lightness in the sisters’ shared excitement, particularly in moments when good news briefly releases them from the pressures of survival.
The performances are appealingly distinct. Laura Del Papa gives Charlotte a matronly authority touched by fragility; Hilary Scott’s Emily has flint, fire and stubbornness; and Lara Lucia brings Anne an impulsive brightness, especially in the scene surrounding the arrival of a publisher’s letter. Together, the three actors build a sturdy ensemble of women whose intimacy is inseparable from rivalry, dependence and ambition.
Juvonen writes in her Director’s note that she hopes audiences take from the play the value of hard work, perseverance and sisterly bonds in times of hardship. The message may not be new, but in this setting—and after the company’s own week of practical obstacles—it lands with fitting sincerity.
Bronte: The World Without remains a good production, one marked by respect for Mand’s script and by a cast and crew visibly committed to bringing it to life despite the elements. As performances continue, the play’s emotional textures should only grow richer.
Running time: approximately one hour and 40 minutes with no intermission.
The production runs to August 2 at 201 Guildwood Parkway, Scarborough. For tickets: (647) 576-7822 or visit: https://www.guildfestivaltheatre.ca/tickets
GUILD FESTIVAL THEATRE presents
BRONTE: The World Without by Jordi Mand
Directed by Helen Juvonen
Production Designer: Elisia Evans
Sound Designer: Maddie Bautista
Lighting Designer: Honey Hoseiny
Costume Designer: Alex Amini
Fight Director: Siobhan Richardson
Choreographer: Leah Wilton
Stage Manager: Sabrina Weinstein
Performers: Laura Del Papa as Charlotte Brontë, Hilary Scott as Emily Brontë, Lara Lucia as Anne Brontë
